Western leaders aren’t cowards for continuing to support Israel — they’re committed imperialist ideologues

We are repeatedly told that the Western political elite, along with their institutional appendages, are cowardly — that they are simply too afraid to say and do more in the face of the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza, or that they are too readily influenced by Zionist propaganda and too beholden to the pro-regime lobby. But such accusations don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Biden, Harris, and almost the entirety of the Democratic Party — including its so-called “progressive wing” — were so committed to the Zionist settler colony that they preferred to throw away the 2024 election rather than offer any serious opposition to its atrocity crimes and other rights abuses. Similarly, a plethora of European government officials — Keir Starmer, David Lammy, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, and many more — are so committed to the Zionist settler colony that they are willing to risk indictment for aiding and abetting war crimes rather than suspend trade agreements or arms sales.

The entire Western ruling class has willingly and thoroughly exposed the fallacy of liberal values, the rule of law, and freedom of expression, so as to preserve unwavering support for the Zionist regime. This is not political cowardice. Rather, it represents an unwavering ideological commitment to their economic and political interests, as exemplified by the Zionist settler colony.

It should be no surprise that elections continue in Western countries without the emergence of a single coherent anti-Zionist alternative — the political, economic, and cultural elite are almost entirely united in their support for the Zionist regime and its century-long campaign of settler colonial expansion. Indeed, this illusion of choice has already played out many times since the beginning of the genocide, during elections in the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, and elsewhere.

In many countries, a majority of the public were already opposed to the Zionist settler colony and supportive of the Palestinian struggle, while the genocide featured high among their concerns, and yet they were unable to vote for anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine political representation. In short, the public can’t vote away settler colonial violence. Nor is this a matter of a lack of understanding or a deficit in sympathy — more testimonials, more conferences, and more reports will change very little.

Cowardice can’t explain away this dogged support. An alternative explanation recognizes the Zionist settler colony as an extension of Western expansion and extraction. The Zionist settler colony sustains the military-industrial complex by purchasing weapons from the West and using them on Palestinians as test subjects, while its far-reaching suppression of political aspirations throughout the region allows the West to tighten its grip over regional economies and, by extension, their gas, oil, water, and labour.

Economic interests have motivated the West’s support for the Zionist project since its earliest days. One of the main reasons the British colonizers reneged on their promise of independence for Arabs in the region and issued the Balfour Declaration instead — which paved the way for the Zionist colonization of Palestine — was to avoid the risk of losing control of the Suez Canal.

Similarly, the U.S.’s unwavering support for the Zionist settler colony was consolidated in the 1960s in order to promote American economic and political ambitions in the region during the Cold War. President John F. Kennedy ended an American arms embargo with the Zionist regime in 1961, tied the two settler colonies’ security interests, and established their “special relationship.” While America’s support for the Zionist regime has been subject to brief uncertainty (for example, in 1975, the Zionist regime’s refusal to oblige the terms of an American initiative for de-escalation with Egypt led the U.S. to announce a suspension of military shipments until Israel capitulated), Israel’s advancement of American interests in the region became a cornerstone of its national identity. By 1986, American senator Joe Biden openly stated, “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” Forty-seven years later, as U.S. president, he repeated the exact same words to the Zionist regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, who responded, “It’s amazing.”

It is clear that there is no atrocity, no irrefutable evidence, and no legal or moral designation that can convince Western leaders to change course. More images and footage of murdered children (as if 20,000 were not enough), more public declarations from Zionist politicians that they intend to exterminate Palestinians (as if their statements on October 8, 2023 and corresponding actions were not enough), clearer evidence that Western military, economic, and diplomatic support fuels the genocide (as if Western politicians were not already well aware), will not trigger change.

Neither the genocide, starvation, ethnic cleansing, occupation, nor apartheid subjugation of the Palestinian people is too high a price to pay for the Western elite; the political and economic benefits they extract from the Zionist settler colony far outweigh the value they ascribe to Palestinian life.

Raising the cost of support for genocide

Those fighting for Palestinian justice and liberation must take heed of this reality, since it will never be enough to simply focus on convincing the public that Palestinians are deserving of justice and liberation. Much more effective campaigning for Palestinians must make it more costly than profitable to uphold the Zionist regime. This is why the harshest suppression of the Palestine solidarity movement in the West has been directed against Palestine Action — now proscribed as a terrorist organization in an unprecedented move by the British government, for which supporters face extreme prison sentences — since they were able to mobilize a substantial number of people to destroy military hardware and threaten the profit margins that sustain Western support for the Zionist settler colony.

Elsewhere, those who rattled the cages of elite institutions — universities, hospitals, media agencies, and technology corporations — have also been suppressed. Microsoft recently fired four employees for protests against the direct use of its technology to target Palestinians — adding to other employees fired earlier in the year, and is reportedly working with the FBI to track down other protesters.

Universities — particularly in the U.S. — withhold degrees from protesters and call the police to beat and arrest their own students. Healthcare workers have been fired, suspended, and investigated for expressions of solidarity with Palestinians and for exposing institutional complicity in the Zionist regime’s crimes. Media institutions have targeted those who have exposed the ways in which they operate as an extension of the Zionist lobby and quashed reporting that unmasks the extent to which Western political and economic interests directly prop up Zionism.

Such far-reaching suppression correlates directly with the disruptive impact of these efforts on the structures of economic and cultural production that sustain the West’s unwavering support for the Zionist settler colony.

Within global systems of power, the same rules apply — criticism of the Zionist regime is permitted for as long as it does not pose any tangible threat to the structures of economic and cultural production that preserve it. By way of illustration, United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has been outspoken in her condemnation of the Zionist regime’s crimes since she was appointed into the role in May 2022, and yet the U.S. Administration opted to impose sanctions on her after she published a report that named some of the largest companies that sustain the Zionist settler colony and amplified calls for a global boycott.

Those who seek justice and liberation in Palestine must look beyond testimonials, conferences, and reports that perceive the failure to act as a matter of a lack of awareness or understanding. Instead, we must set our sights on tangible disruption of the structures of Zionist economic and cultural production.

The lowest bar for this is our individual and collective boycott of the companies, media agencies, and other institutions that profit from — and thus maintain — the Zionist settler colony and its genocidal logic of elimination of the Palestinian people. Beyond the boycott are a multitude of strategies of escalation and various forms of direct action, and to this end, there must be enough of us willing to pay a price in the struggle for our collective liberation.