A friend has reminded me of why I believe in the Israel lobby. If per Chomsky and the materialists, it’s corporations that drive policy, then how come several big American corporations bitch about the Gaza blockade and nothing happens. What about this 2006 leaked State Department cable on all the corporations that were upset with the blockade:
The companies included Coca Cola, Procter and Gamble, Caterpillar, Philip Morris, Westinghouse, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Aramex and Dell.
“The deeply problematic procedures and allegations of endemic corruption at Karni terminal constitute a major non-tariff barrier to trade,” the cable, posted online by Norwegian daily of reference Aftenposten, read.
Those are big companies. And notice that their desire to open up Gaza doesn’t change American policy. The blockade has only gotten worse– though, no, apparently not because of bribery, which is what the corps were upset about then. And the reasons the corporations don’t win is because they are being overruled by the special relationship, the lobby, in which the U.S. defers to Israeli concerns.
Something else about the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower’s framing of the problem will be 50 years old this week and the American Conservative has memorialized the speech with a special section, “Was Dwight Right?”. I read Eisenhower’s speech for the first time, and noticed that Eisenhower referred to two giant concerns. One was the military industrial complex, the other was about a scientific elite.
in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Much longer discussion, but when Juan Cole says that our Israel-Palestine policy is being held hostage because neocons “have perhaps half of America’s 400 billionaires on their side,” well we’re talking about elites…
