U.S. neocons’ teamwork with the Israel Lobby has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century, writes Jeffrey Sachs.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Nov. 30, 2023. (State Department/Chuck Kennedy)
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams
It’s official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress just months ago, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
America must take note: the U.S. government is complicit in Netanyahu’s war crimes and has fully partnered in Netanyahu’s violent rampage across the Middle East.
For 30 years the Israel Lobby has induced the U.S. to fight wars on Israel’s behalf designed to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian State. Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, and has been prime minister for 17 years since then, has been the main cheerleader for U.S.-backed wars in the Middle East.
The result has been a disaster for the U.S. and a bloody catastrophe not only for the Palestinian people but for the entire Middle East.
These have not been wars to defend Israel, but rather wars to topple governments that oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel viciously opposes the two-state solution called for by international law, the Arab Peace Initiative, the G20, the BRICS, the OIC and the U.N. General Assembly.
Israel’s intransigence, and its brutal suppression of the Palestinian people, has given rise to several militant resistance movements since the beginning of the occupation. These movements are backed by several countries in the region.
The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process.
Netanyahu Makes Endless War
Israel’s approach, especially under Netanyahu, is to overthrow foreign governments that oppose Israel’s domination, and recreate the map of a “New Middle East” without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.
What is shocking is that Washington has turned the U.S. military and federal budget over to Netanyahu for his disastrous wars. The history of the Israel lobby’s complete takeover of Washington can be found in the remarkable new book by Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024).
Netanyahu repeatedly told the American people that they would be the beneficiaries of his policies. In fact, Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III.
If Trump wants to make America great again, the first thing he should do is to make America sovereign again, by ending Washington’s subservience to the Israel Lobby.
Netanyahu surrounded by supporters after his fourth address to a joint session of U.S. Congress, July 24, 2024. (C-Span still)
The Israel Lobby not only controls the votes in Congress but places hardline backers of Israel into key national security posts.
These have included:
Madeleine Albright (secretary of state for Clinton), Lewis Libby (chief of staff of Vice President Cheney), Victoria Nuland (deputy national security advisor of Cheney, NATO ambassador of Bush Jr., assistant secretary of state for Obama, under-secretary of state for Biden), Paul Wolfowitz (under-secretary of defense for Bush Sr., deputy secretary of defense for Bush Jr.), Douglas Feith (under-secretary of defense for Bush Jr.), Abram Shulsky (director of the Office of Special Plans, Department of Defense for Bush Jr.), Elliott Abrams (deputy national security advisor for Bush Jr.), Richard Perle (chairman of the Defense National Policy Board for Bush Jr.), Amos Hochstein (senior advisor to the Secretary of State for Biden), and Antony Blinken (secretary of state for Biden).
In 1995, Netanyahu described his plan of action in his book Fighting Terrorism. To control terrorists (Netanyahu’s characterization of militant groups fighting Israel’s illegal rule over the Palestinians), it’s not enough to fight the terrorists. Instead, it’s necessary to fight the “terrorist regimes” that support such groups. And the U.S. must be the one to lead:
“The cessation of terrorism must therefore be a clear-cut demand, backed up by sanctions and with no prizes attached. As with all international efforts, the vigorous application of sanctions to terrorist states must be led by the United States, whose leaders must choose the correct sequence, timing, and circumstances for these actions.”
As Netanyahu told the American people in 2001 (reprinted as the 2001 foreword to Fighting Terrorism):
“The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states. International terrorism simply cannot be sustained for long without the regimes that aid and abet it… Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust. The international terrorist network is thus based on regimes — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Taliban Afghanistan, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and several other Arab regimes, such as the Sudan.”
All of this was music to the ears of the neocons in Washington, who similarly subscribed to U.S.-led regime change operations (through wars, covert subversion, U.S.-led color revolutions, violent coups, etc.) as the main way to deal with perceived U.S. adversaries.
After 9/11, the Bush Jr. neocons (led by Cheney and Rumsfeld) and the Bush Jr. insiders of the Israel lobby (led by Wolfowitz and Feith), teamed up to remake the Middle East through a series of U.S.-led wars on Netanyahu’s targets in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and Islamic East Africa (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan). The role of the Israel Lobby in stoking these wars of choice is described in detail in Pappe’s new book.
The neocon-Israel lobby war plan was shown to General Wesley Clark on a visit to the Pentagon soon after 9/11. An officer pulled a paper from his desk and told Clark:
“I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years — we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark on how the US planned to "take out" 7 countries in 5 years pic.twitter.com/5o2gLZZSN8
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) September 14, 2023
In 2002, Netanyahu pitched the war with Iraq to the American people and Congress by promising them
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region[…] People sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
A remarkable new insider account of Netanyahu’s role in spearheading the Iraq War also comes from retired Marine Command Chief Master Sargent Dennis Fritz, in his book Deadly Betrayal (2024). When Fritz was called to deploy to Iraq in early 2002, he asked senior military officials why the U.S. was deploying to Iraq, but he got no clear answer. Rather than lead soldiers into a battle he could not explain or justify, he left the service.
In 2005, Fritz was invited back to the Pentagon, now as a civilian, to assist Under-Secretary Douglas Feith in the declassification of documents about the war, so that Feith could use them to write a book about the war.
Fritz discovered in the process that the Iraq War had been spurred by Netanyahu in close coordination with Wolfowitz and Feith. He learned that the purported U.S. war aim, to counter Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, was a cynical public relations gimmick led by an Israel lobby insider, Abram Shulsky, to garner U.S. public support for the war.
Dennis Fritz, a former Pentagon insider, explains how the public was sold a war of aggression based on lies.https://t.co/Rg7KqgU5It
— Current Affairs (@curaffairs) November 1, 2024
Iraq was to be the first of the seven wars in five years, but as Fritz explains, the follow-up wars were delayed by the anti-U.S. Iraqi insurgency. Nonetheless, the U.S. eventually went to war or backed wars against Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Lebanon. In other words, the U.S. carried out Netanyahu’s plans — except for Iran.
To this day, indeed to this hour, Netanyahu works to stoke a U.S. war on Iran, one that could open World War III, either by Iran making the breakthrough to nuclear weapons, or by Iran’s ally, Russia, joining such a war on Iran’s side.
The neocon-Israel lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the U.S. or its proxies — Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria — now lie in ruins.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace, and yet again the U.S. has opposed the unanimous will of the world (other than Israel) this week by vetoing a U.N. Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the Council.
The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the U.S. from the Israel Lobby.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the U.N. Broadband Commission for Development.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are paradigm-shifting with respect to actual application/enforcement of international law, and therefore the arrest warrants are truly historic.
For the first time in world history, arguably, so-called “world leaders” have become forced to declare publicly (loud and clear for all people on Earth to hear) whether or not they support the continuation of granting total impunity to the world’s most dangerous premeditated mass murderers: war criminals.
“The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process.”
By “the militant groups”, do you mean to include the IDF? After all, are we trying to be equally fair to all involved militant groups?
Damn great to hear what some of us “conspiracy theorists” were saying all along. Transparency should matter. And war should first be approved by a representative government (which we do not currently have), by and for the people and not Congress alone who seems NOT to represent us. When there is no provable reason for war, then what is the reason? I read about Feith and the other neocons before Fritz’s book came out. There are many others trying to warn us of these neocons who do not care about American soldier’s lives or ours and create reasons for them to go to war and die or make laws to incarcerate us for noncompliance in their New World Order using climate change as a weapon. Anyone remember Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumble? We definitely need to include TRUTH and FICTION THAT REFLECTS THAT TRUTH in a public education system that hides it.
It is fantastic a man of his calibre wrote such a book. They will believe him before they ever believe a Section 8 resident like me. I am here to protect the most unprotected people in my country and it is a duty and a pleasure to live among the “least” of us, to know their stories, many of whom are women and disabled because what? The world we live in; ain’t it a trip that needs change?
The US war crimes are well known and some others are poorly known for the manipulations they were.
The karmic entanglements of Western Civilization with the rest of the world with military dominance cannot be escaped forever.
The world imbalance due to male dominance protective aggression has to be decreased for the sake of human civilizations survival.
It is too late for a 2 state solution .Palestine must be Palestine ,all of it ,as it once was ,living in peace ,Jews Arabs and Christians.
That is the solution and the only one .
The late great UK historian Tony Judt wrote the prescient essay, ‘Israel: The Alternative” (New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003).
He forecasts that the only, and difficult, future is a single ‘binational’ state, and says Israel artificially imported “a characteristically late-19th-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers and international law.”
Today in history.
61 years ago today, American democracy died in Daley, Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Nov 22, 1963.
“The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process. ”
This is my only disagreement with prof Sachs. How could anyone believe the genocidal maniacs who try to kill every Palestinian could live peacefully side by side in the region between the river and the sea???
Demilitarize the militant groups? Where is the accountability in that in that suggestion, given the behavior of the western elites and their west Asia puppets? Two state solution? That is an absurd goal at the point.
“Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword away! All who use a sword will be killed by a sword.”
– Mathew 26:52, “God’s Word Translation”
Well, it has been foretold how America will end.
Fascinating that the warriors who so loudly proclaim themselves as ‘the Christian nation’ don’t believe in the power of their omnipresent and omnipotent, monotheistic God’s ability to foretell the future of those sword swinging warriors.
thank you so much again, mr sachs, for reminding us of
who the culprits are in the endless chain of forever wars.
[ilan pappé’s book on lobbyism for israel is indeed revelatory
and dennis fritz also counts among the growing number of
peace advocates. i appreciate you pointing to his recent book.]
as to a “two-state solution”, i tend to think it is unfeasible.
the south african example appears more viable, although,
given the decades of utter inequality, of mutual hatred and
of unfathomable numbers of people being traumatized for
generations to come, it will take ages for a truly democratic
state and nation to develop. a more than herculean task …
I strongly agree, Steve. Zionism must die, and we must have justice. A single democratic state is the only way forward.
A true American solution to the West Asia problems would be something like …
One nation, where all people have certain rights that can not be denied to them, including, but not limited to, the rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and freedom of religion. Where a government is instituted among the people to provide for the safety and happiness of all of the people.
If America was really true to American values, that would always be the ‘plan’ for West Asia. And not a bad plan for modern America, if America really wants to return to when it was, not great, but at least a good idea.
Israel, the genocidal apartheid state, may be on the brink of becoming a failed state but the Zionist lobby is so firmly entrenched across the Western countries that it’s difficult to see how that happens without dragging much of the West down with it.
Great article. However the ICC should have have put out arrest warrants for Biden and Blinken who made the Genocide/ Ethnic Cleansing possible. Of course it would only be symbolic since The Hague Invasion Act of 2002 gives the president power to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”. The ICC is just for America’s/ the EU’s enemies designated as terrorists/ war criminals.
For those who engage in the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority (ie, State Media), it is worth noting that Marine Command Chief Master Sargeant Dennis Fritz held the highest non-commissioned rank (E-9) in any US military branch. There are a lot more generals and admirals than there are Chief Master Sargeants who are much more involved in the nuts and bolts of the military (he is not an ordinary E-5 sargeant “talking out of school.”
“The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process. ”
This is nonsense, it will never work, and nobody ever believed it was a feasible solution.
Israel and Palestine must be amalgamated into a single truly democratic state, where everyone has equal rights.
Israel as a Jewish state is a racist, apartheid concept. The world must move on from supporting fascism.
And the first step in achieving your last sentence is to immediately stop the massive flow of US taxpayer dollars to the Israeli war machine to carry out its expansion.
America, both Democrats and Republicans, have been firmly against a two-state solution ever since they let the Oslo Accords be manipulated into a process that made damn sure that this never happened. The “Two-State Solution” was agreed by Palestinians in the last century. It is Israel, and its corrupt ‘mediator’ America, that has been firmly committed to killing the two-state solution. It was the Americans who helped the Israelis trick/force the Palestinians into not getting what they had agreed to in that written agreement.
When they talk of a ‘Two-state’ solution, they mean a fake state for the Palestinians, with no democracy, no independence, no right of self-defense, but an appointed government (by Israel+America) that rules the way Israel+America wants. Blinken was running around for awhile trying to find a sucker to rule the thing for Wall Street. No takers for the job of Dictator of Palestine.
We’ve just seen the Biden Administration trying to implement Trump’s Deal of the Century where Israel would ‘normalize’ with the ‘Arab rulers’. The key condition of the ‘deal’ was that the Palestinians would be swept under the rug and their very existence denied, leading to the map of the Middle East that Netanyahu displayed to the world at the UN. This is not just the goal of Israel, but the declared goal of both American political parties reflecting the will of Wall Street. They all agreed to what was ‘effectively’ the genocide of the Palestinians, only quieter.
All the servants of Wall Street are mad now because the Palestinians refused to die quietly as they were ordered.