Did you notice how quickly politicians put American aid to Egypt on the table during the Mubarak crackdown? Then-Obama-spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the billions in aid were at stake, and I believe Howard Berman did too. Many politicians questioned the aid, media people too.
You never hear any politician questioning aid to Israel, and no mainstream media figures. No, that is the sole province of grassroots campaigns. Even when Israel kills and maims Americans who are protesting conditions there, let alone kills nonviolent Palestinian protesters, no one talks about taking Israel’s aid away.
So, my question: If the vaunted Military Industrial Complex (which I’d remind you is the coinage of a Republican president more than 50 years ago; so much for new paradigms of history) determines our foreign policy, and the Military Industrial Complex just cares about defense spending and defense contractors’ profits, how come politicians turned so readily on the MIC and were willing to sacrifice its interests during the Egyptian revolution? When those politicians never do so in the Israeli context.
Answer: Because the MIC is not the top dog when it comes to Middle East policy, the Israel lobby is, and the lobby cares about aid to Israel way more than aid to Egypt.
And this is precisely the same dichotomy I experienced as a contrarian mainstream journalist when I got to criticize everything and anything during a long career but when I started criticizing Israel, I got a flat tire. And yes there is in the denial of this reality a denial of Jewish agency (as Harry Clark puts it elsewhere here today). An agency that I grew up believing in, when my mother told me about all the smart Jews who had helped to form western society, from Einstein to Marx to Freud.
