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Stop asking people if they are America first or Israel first - we don’t want either.
I’ve heard this question asked consistently, by likely well-meaning and otherwise aligned people, but we truly have got to stop and this little blurb is my view as to why and what we gain from changing, and what we lose from failing to. Firstly, my basic thesis - anything you say about an IDF soldier, can and should be said about an American soldier. Anything you say about Israeli politics can and should be said about American politics. And anything you say about an Israeli can and should be said about an American (specifically a white American) American nationalism is not better than Zionism, and in the current political context they are almost indistinguishable.
If you are ready aligned on that, fantastic, this essay is a set of arguments for that that you might find helpful - if you aren’t sticking around and you might be compelled.1
What is the phenomenon?
In my time in anti-zionist spaces especially online there have become two distinct views: Israel runs America and America runs Israel. I am staunchly and principally on the America runs Israel side, and I think literally everything about reality demonstrates this - From the fact that things like AIPAC are primarily funded by Americans, and American Christian Zionist at that, the fact that people like Henry Kissinger described Israel explicitly as doing Americans bidding and aims, and the fact that even more low-key imperialists like Joe Biden, famously said that if Israel did not exist America would create one.
I’m not going to contend substantially with the overwhelming often vacuous and often repackaged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Israel controlling America. From my view, having clear eyes and a functioning mind is enough to demonstrate that a small country with an almost entirely imported economy and dependent defense infrastructure is not the one in control of the largest Empire the world has ever seen. Almost every single proof of this supposed assertion is better understood as the simple alignment of Israel’s interest with the oligarch class of America’s interests, which I once again feel called to point out are majority Christian. If you have a serious contention on this, I would love to see an actual fundamental response and one that does not conflate any jew acting ever with Israel acting always. Until then I’m going to move on and presume we are all on the same page on basic material reality.
The consequence though of falling into this other camp of not viewing Israel is an expansion of America, but either as a unique unexplained evil or as a unique unexplained evil controlling America, is lots of very compelling viral clips and sound bites that I bet we have all heard such as “ do you believe in America first or Israel first?”, but there are also some obvious ones that I often run into, such as the idea that Israel pulled us into the Iraq War or that Israel alone pulled us into this current war on Iran. so that’s what I’m talking about, and as I flesh it out I hope you can recognize both the communities that engage in it and the particular taste of that ideology.
What’s the Danger?
Now you may be saying what’s the problem, don’t we want to undermine Israel? even if we think that there’s some fundamental different theoretical explanation for the power relationship between these two entities, why does it matter? Why do you care? Well my friends I have a list for that too.
The dangerous threefold: Liberal Co-optation of Anti-Zionism, Fascist co-optation of anti-zionism, and Immediate and Actual Harm.
Liberal Co-optation of Anti-Zionism
This is the one that keeps me up at night: Liberal politicians coming out condemning Israel for pulling us into the Iraq War, condemning Israel for pulling us into the conflict with Iran, condemning arms to Israel, and saying that American Military members should have been the ones with those arms. What this does is it satiates the anti-imperial impulses that observations of the extreme Imperial violence that we are seeing out of Israel, but it allows the imperialists themselves to completely reconfigure.
Take for example of recent post that I saw out of a progressive candidate who was asking the question “Does South Korea have the right to exist” and idealizing the fact that South Korea pays for its own defense, suggesting that Israel should do the same. This is not Anti-Zionism, this is alter-zionism - instead of directly funding isreal, we should indirectly boost its economy and its industry through free trade agreements and selective sanctions of its competitors like we do for South Korea. We should Aid and abett it in its founding genocide (as we did for South Korea) and then provide continued extreme diplomatic support for them.
This is doing what liberals do best, which is take the demands of the populist left, give the least but important concessions that they can give - direct arms sales - and maintain and obscure the system upon which that very violence was predicated. this has the largest chance of demobilizing revolutionary movements, of forcing them to a table where they are not in a seat, but they are on the menu, and creating social norms to shame and limit them at the least cost to the empire.
Fascist co-optation of anti-zionism
This one is slightly more obvious, and thus doesn’t keep me up at night as much ( though likely because I am also privileged to not be a direct target of it… yet) - this is the one we have all seen, Nick Fuentes proclaiming how Israel controls America and is forcing us to do all the bad things we did, from slavery to the Vietnam War to (from his view) a bad side in World War II. We see how he shifts basic populism against American imperialism into specific anti-semitism with a very cohesive yet entirely nonsensical worldview. It provides explanatory ease to people who are seeing the harm and don’t want to be responsible for them, an ease that is simply not present from my worldview where I as a tax paying american do unfortunately get moral obligations to make the world better from the harm my state has caused.
There is occasionally though luckily quite quiet a left anti-zionist voice that perks up its head and notices that all of these Nazis say they want to work with us, and in fact quite often beg us to work with them… why are we not taking advantage? We only have to sacrifice our trans comrades and our Jewish comrades and our muslim comrades? Is that too much to ask for the liberation of Palestine? are you being pragmatic, are you being a purist?
Now of course I phrased that in a way that it should be obvious what I think of that argument - poor - but it still must be contended with and the obvious answer is that it cost us too much to work with them, because it cost us everything we have. The only Power that leftists have is our solidarity the only Power that leftists have is are clear-eyed worldview, and if we sacrifice that then we simply cease to functionally be leftists, we could be Strasserists, but just as America Firsters ultimately get humbled and be forced to be honest about their imperial aspirations: Nick admitting he supports the imperial invasion of Venezuela, We would be an instrument in a movement that we wouldn’t control but would control us. which leads me to the Third, and final on my non-exhaustive list -
Real Immediate Harm -
Every second we engage in American nationalism ( the words America First leaving our mouth) we are causing harm to the people that are harmed in the name of American exceptionalism. invading Iran is in fact putting America first, because what America is, is the American Empire which is predicated upon violence to countries like Iran. Every second we forget that Nick Fuentes does not believe in our Jewish comrades’ right to live, we do harm to our Jewish comrades, and we enable zionists as well to degrade our movement in the name of countering his antisemitism ( not that they need much enabling In fairness). And as I will set out below, we are simply failing to be effective We do not at least internally and ideologically reject this nationalism because doing so allows us both rhetorically educatively and practically to be more effective not only in our anti-zionism but our anti-imperialism as a whole.
So what do I do then?
Don’t resist the differences between America and Israel. There is often a knee jerk, though Justified response to this to suggest that that is merely a Zionist talking point that downplays israelis crime. though I am compelled to tell you that failing to recognize the extreme intrinsic violence in Americanism just as there is in israelism, downplays that violence and those victims of americanism. Instead of downplaying one extreme Colonial violence off of the other you can understand them together - you can understand how America First genuinely does lead to Israel first. how the genocide of the natives was a playbook for genocidaires of the world, how the concentration camps and the slave holding is a playbook for what’s going on in the West Bank and what’s going on in Gaza. Instead of working to reach American nationalists and convince them to work against what is fundamentally a benefit to their ideology ( as American nationalism merely is the ideology of worshiping Violence by America, specifically white americans) we ought to work as effectively and fundamentally against them and their ideology because that is the only way we will either not be co-opted and be effective at all in aims.
What Do We Gain?
I’m not asking you to not say this because it offends me or out of the goodness of your heart - I’m telling you this because not only is it true just factually, but it also effective to our aims, and how you ask? well my my I have yet another list!
Responding To Vacuous Zionists Arguments
I can feel an eye roll already coming, but it is valuable when it can be done without sacrificing important values to shield ourselves from Easy critique. Zionists for all of their faults are very well funded and thus oftentimes know where those weak spots are and one thing you will hear consistently from zionists is that we are essentializing or specially focusing on Israel too much. Now obviously there is an easy response to this: it is the peak of imperialism. But in order to do that, you have to come from the place of viewing it essentially as an expansion of American imperialism. if you do not, and you have one of the series of other above stated perspectives on why we ought to move and care about Israel in ways that we do not move and care about other harms and atrocities going on in the world, then you have a worse time justifying Why Us speaking about certain things more than others and you very likely will in reality regardless of a Zionist perspective not speak about other things to the extent that you ought.
Take for example the consistent refrain from idiots “why are pro Palestinian people so silent about Congo?” - the fact is we aren’t, because many of us recognize how the atrocities in the Congo are imminently related to The Liberation of the Palestinian people, and of the Sudanese people and of the Native people of Turtle Island. but you know who doesn’t? Nick Fuentes. You know who doesn’t? A liberal who thinks South Korea has a right to exist. having a holistic worldview that doesn’t arbitrarily separate Israel from the rest of the anti-capitalist anti-Imperial worldview, and for the love of God it doesn’t contribute to americanism ( for which the genocide in Sudan is deeply profitable) allows you to respond to these arguments better
“The Israel of ….” - Anti-imperialism outside of the context of Zionism
If you confine yourself, and epistemically limit your understanding of American imperialism or even western or imperialism as a whole to its relationship with one particular context then not only do you fail to understand the concept itself but you also remove yourself from the many helpful conceptual tools you build in applying it to other contexts. For example - criticisms of the United Arab Emirates do not start and end at its relationship with Israel nor does it start and end with its relationship with America itself - but the tools and contexts and methods and even calls to action, that we have built with the anti-zionist movement in America are not one-to-one but perhaps 1 to .9 applicable to working against the United Arab Emirates and it’s complicity with the Sudanese genocide. Its like a muscle build up our ability to recognize the effects of transnational capital and how it is used to fund Zionism and Zionist complicity in the Gulf, then we would fail to be able to recognize transnational capitals role in funding the violence that Rwanda is committing in the Congo with the funding and diplomatic support of the UK.
Activism and leftism as a whole is a muscle - and if you only allow it to move a little bit it won’t get as strong, but if you allow it to add more General context and a more cohesive context not only do you inoculate yourself to whataboutisms (like above) because you can actually answer what about this other context? but you also actually get to be able to answer that in context, which strengthens both your antizionism and leftism as a whole.
Absolutely Fucking Dunking on Liberals
This is actually what prompted me to discuss this - because I have found that Israel as an example for what is wrong with America is one of the most effective ways to get liberals to not only shut the fuck up but actually possibly change their mind.
Take for example the much repeated, but as I have said before often oversimplified, “ Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin” - a liberal will lose their ever loving mind when they hear this, but a Mamdani liberal, or even a Buttigieg Liberal at this point, might not have such a visceral reaction if you go “would you tell a Palestinian that there’s a genuine difference between Israeli political parties?” No their identity reductionist ass, and their hopefully baby antiimperialism ass, would probably not have the gaul to say that - and they might actually say themselves that they understand how Netanyahu and Golda Meir are in fact two sides of the same coin. Suddenly they aren’t making a bastardized “Harm Reducation” argument about whether the genocide is completed in 5 years or 10 years, they understand the concept of a liberal and conservative Colonial dynamic, And they get how silly it sounds to suggest that Palestinians taking the bread crumbs Golda Meir might offer them ( even if those bread crumbs are literally the ability to live for five more years) does not abdicate such liberals obligation to end the genocide itself, and certainly does not allow them to celebrate and clap like fucking seals when those bread crumbs are delivered.
The next move obviously, is to take them slowly and ask them how that is different from America. Is not America a settler Colonial entity? Is not America continuing an ongoing genocide against the natives? Do American liberals not actively enable the empire?
The only way to make this argument is to stand 10 toes down that Israel and America are genuinely at least in the primary principled way: the same.
I do this across contexts - as said at the beginning I convince Americans that they’re Warriors and they’re valorized veterans are terrorists because Americans are happy to call IDF members terrorists. I get them to care about black nationalism because I can tell them how they support Palestinian nationalism. I get them to stop with their peacegating because we have at least a little bit one that rhetorical war with getting liberals to stfu about Palestinian resistance.
The possibilities are endless because Israel in fact is merely America with the contradictions of imperialism heightened. The racialization, violence, occupation, control, surveillance are all clearer there, the harms of settler colonialism in high definition: and all of that violence and vitriol is swinging as quick as possible back to America so we have to do the same and allow the insights and response and resistance that it gives us to swing back to America just as fast.
Conclusion -
This doesn’t engage with the substance of the alternative view - I have no interest really in engaging in the substance of the alternative view and that is intentional. But rather what I aim to do is offer a practical reason to rhetorically and ideologically expand any anti-zionist movement into an intersectional Anti-Imperialist movement especially for those in and around the Imperial core.
This starts with the end of the juxtaposition of American Nationalism and Israeli nationalism, which misses the whole entire point that both of these Concepts were constructed explicitly to benefit the exact same people or moreso exact same thing: International capital and imperialism. And that may be a terribly unsurprising end to an essay by a leftist, my deepest apologies, but I do hope I have at least provided some tools for arguing the positive case for the conflation of Israeli and American interests, and away from dangerous narratives that can be co-opted either by Imperial liberals or conservatives.
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This is not for Palestinians - y’all can do whatever you want, and I as a western activist have no interest or aim in critiquing you - this is though, for other Western activists, as that is my positionality and that is what I’m speaking about. Because tactical engagement with the Empire is for the people being harmed by that Empire, not for members of the Empire itself.
