Neither Imperialism, Nor Zionism: Reclaiming Palestine

As he exited the presidency in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the country that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Responding to the escalating war in Vietnam, American troubadour, Bob Dylan, composed his “Masters of War,” which is as much a call to the conscience of America today as it was then.

When it was written, Palestine was not on the minds of most Americans. Israel’s violent theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s indigenous population, well underway, went largely unseen and uninterrupted.

Israel, linchpin of U.S. supremacy in the Middle East, has been instrumental in effecting the havoc and chaos inflicted upon the region by the “misplaced power” warned against.

After more than five decades of political, economic and military collaboration, American imperialism and Israeli Zionism have become indistinguishable.

They have grown ever more alike, more ruthless and lawless, since the 11 September 2001 attacks that targeted America’s institutional pillars; and since President George W. Bush declared an indefinite and undefined “war on terror.”

Israel’s significant influence over American institutions has expanded as well. Essentially, it has become difficult to tell where “Greater Israel” begins and where it ends, since its ideology and influence have seeped into the political, economic, military and social life of the United States.

Both countries share a well-deserved distinction. They are widely viewed by many across the globe as bullies and rogue nations.

While distinct, the United States and Israel share similarities; elements that have made them the threat they are today; specifically:

• The centrality of militarism and veneration of the soldier
• Use of extrajudicial or targeted killings
• National identity based on supremacist ideology
• Attacks on institutions, the rule of law and human rights
• The manipulation and erasure of history.

Centrality of Militarism and Veneration of the Soldier

Militarism and jingoism function as central values in both martial cultures.

The military, through mandatory conscription of Jewish citizens, has been deeply integrated within Israeli society, creating a society deeply connected to the state.  Participation in the military not only defines national identity, it is considered by many young Jewish Israelis as a rite of passage.

The warrior ethos can be traced to the secular Viennese founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) and to Russian-born Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), founder of the Zionist Revisionist Movement (precursor to today’s Likud Party).

For Herzl, building a modern secular European homeland for Jews in Palestine required shedding the centuries-old image of Jews as powerless, weak and passive, creating instead a new national identity based on physical strength, ruggedness and productivity, rather than one centered on religious identity based on the Torah.

Jabotinsky, too, emphasized that building and maintaining a “Jewish” state could only be accomplished through military force; that a metaphorical “Iron Wall” would be required to successfully colonize the native land of the Palestinians.

The physical transformation Herzl imagined in 1896 and Jabotinsky pushed for in the 1920s sowed the seeds for the brutal militaristic entity Israel has become.  The manufactured image of the “most moral army in the world,” of the virtuous, noble soldier, has been exposed by the ignoble videos posted by Israeli soldiers routinely committing war crimes in Gaza.

In the United States, as well, the military has been looked upon as the most trusted public institution and granted prominent status.  Soldiers—judged as the best among us and the embodiment of loyalty, sacrifice and strength—have been central to the militaristic myth that has made Washington’s failed wars palatable to the public.

The military has been increasingly conjoined with corporate-owned sports teams and events, blurring the lines between sports and war as entertainment.  It is celebrated at most sporting events with the required singing of the national anthem, military aircraft flyovers of stadiums, and other displays of patriotism.  It has become essential for American politicians, particularly for presidents, to pay verbal respect to the armed forces by concluding speeches with: “May God bless our troops.”

Department of Defense (now Department of War) budgets are considered sacrosanct in the United States. From 2001 to 2022, an estimated $8 trillion was spent on the military; with over a trillion dollars budgeted for the Pentagon in 2026.

Use of Extrajudicial or Targeted Killings

Violence as the solution to problems has become normalized in the militaristic political cultures of the U.S. and Israel.  Both act on the imminent threat doctrine, that they must always be prepared to attack or wage war against those who would rebel against or challenge their hegemony.

Consequently, anyone who opposes them or fails to capitulate is subject to extrajudicial killing— targeted execution outside of any legal framework.

Designating countries and groupsas “state sponsors of terrorism” or “terrorists” have been instrumental in the execution of the imminent threat doctrine, allowing Washington and Tel Aviv to carry out their own horrific acts of state terrorism with impunity.

Israel has a long history of executing unlawful killings.  In 2000, it officially acknowledged that, during the first Intifada in the late 1980s, it had instituted a policy of preemptive, targeted killing against Palestinians.

The Zionist regime carried out one of its earliest assassinations soon after declaring statehood and entering into war with its Arab neighbors in 1948.

On 17 September 1948, for example, the terrorist Zionist group Lehi (Stern Gang) assassinated the UN Mediator for Peace, Swedish diplomat, Count Folke Bernadotte, who was in Jerusalem to help resolve the Arab-Israel War.  He was murdered because the Stern Gang opposed his peace proposals, particularly the right of return for Palestinians who had been made refugees by the war.

Since 1948, Israel has assassinated more people than any Western country.  Assassinations are often conducted covertly and rarely admitted to.

Ronen Bergman, investigative journalist, in his book (2018), Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, documented that, “Over the past seven decades, Israel has conducted some 2,300 targeted-assassination operations, killing several thousand people.”

The numbers have drastically increased since the October insurrection. Israel continues to systematically target and kill Palestinian resistance leaders and fighters in Gaza, the West Bank, as well as supporters in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

Israel respects no country’s borders or sovereignty, as demonstrated by its recent air strike (9 September 2025) on the residential headquarters of Hamas mediators in Doha; an unprecedented attack on Qatar, a non-NATO U.S. ally.  Five Palestinians involved in ongoing ceasefire talks and one Qatari citizen were killed.  Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.  It also is headquarters of U.S. Central Command, and plays a crucial role in ceasefire talks.

The Doha attack was the latest of Israel’s many targeted executions and disregard of national borders.  Other fateful examples include:

• Targeted killing of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, in Tehran, Iran, 31 July 2024.
• Targeted killing of Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies (killing 30 and injuring thousands of civilians), 17 and 18, September 2024.
• Assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon, 27 September 2024.

Since 9/11 and America’s “global war on terror,” Washington has taken Israel as a model, instituting a lethal program that has opened the ongoing floodgates of violence.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush, in January 2002, adopted a “capture and kill” strategy against suspected terrorists.  By 2006 the strategic choice between capturing and killing suspects began to shift as legal and political factors moved the balance toward lethal force.

President Barack Obama (2009-2017) fine tuned and escalated Bush’s program, rapidly expanding drone strikes and illegal executions into countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.

One of his most controversial policies was the establishment of a “kill list,” a formal process where targets for drone strikes were decided.  At weekly meetings, which came to be known inside the White House as “Terror Tuesdays,” President Obama, with national security and counterterrorism officials, would discuss the “kill list” (described as a “disposition matrix”) and approve drone strikes on “suspected terrorists.”

During Obama’s tenure, an estimated 3,797 people were killed, including 324 civilians, and three American citizens.  As he reportedly told senior aides in 2011: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

When he took office in 2017, President Trump dropped all pretense regarding the use of extrajudicial killings.  In the first two years of his presidency, his administration carried out 2,243 drone strikes, while during Obama’s eight years in office there were 1,878 strikes.

The policy of the Trump administrations is succinctly described by the American Civil Liberties Union: “In short, the Trump rules served as open-ended authorization for the United States to kill virtually anyone it designates as a terrorist threat, anywhere in the world.”

Trump’s faith in America’s license to kill was evidenced when, in violation of international law and Iraq’s national sovereignty, he ordered the assassination of a prominent senior official of the Islamic Republic of Iran, General Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020.  In the same drone attack at the Baghdad airport, nine other people were killed, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.

In Trump’s White House, the war on drugs has been integrated into the war on terror, with criminals (suspected drug traffickers) designated as terrorists and targeted for assassination.  In a display of American arrogance, Trump recently (2 September 2025) ordered a drone strike on a small unidentified boat in the Caribbean; 11 people were killed in the attack.

National Identity Based on Supremacy

Although they have different outcomes in mind, the national aims of Washington and Tel Aviv are disturbingly similar.

While Israel exists to fulfill the Zionist ideology of Eretz Israel (Greater Israel): to expand the Jewish enclave on stolen Palestinian land through force, propaganda and reliance on Old Testament tales for authenticity, the Trump administration exists to fulfill the right-wing conservative ideology outlined in Project 2025.

The document, authored by former Trump staff in partnership with the conservative Heritage Foundation, outlines an agenda and strategy to radically restructure the executive branch and the federal government to consolidate power favorable to right-wing policies.

Furthermore, in creating an executive with sweeping powers to reshape the country, Project 2025 has been described as a blueprint for the creation of a Christian nation, a homogenous national identity imbued with biblical principles and values.

It is important to note, that in order to move their national agendas forward, both regimes have weaponized the fear of antisemitism.

For decades, Israel, to garner and maintain support, has successfully used the antisemitism stratagem—blurring the lines between criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews—to further its apartheid Greater Israel project.

Like Israel, Trump has adopted similar tactics. Feigning concern for Jewish safety and under the banner of combating antisemitism, he has threatened and cut funds to universities that refuse to follow his directives, revoked student visas and suppressed pro-Palestinian activism on campuses nationwide.

Inevitably, the exploitation of antisemitism, however, has made Jews in the United States and worldwide less safe.  Fear of the accusation, however, has begun to wane because of Israel’s savagery in Gaza and because it has lost control of its decades-long narrative.

Attacks on Institutions, Rule of Law and Human Rights

To consolidate power, both Washington and Tel Aviv have acted illegally to weaken national institutions, undermine the rule of law, and turn back the clock on civil and human rights progress.

Israel’s prime minister has pushed reforms aimed at weakening the country’s Supreme Court to further commandeer power and impede his ongoing corruption trial.  Absent a unified written constitution, the Supreme Court is the only check on the executive and legislative branches (controlled by the same governing coalition) of the Israeli government.

Like Netanyahu, Trump has been working to assert executive dominance over the judiciary and to undermine the rule of law. Unlike Netanyahu, however, Trump depends upon the Supreme Court—whose conservative majority are proponents of the unitary executive theory—to rule in his favor on controversial issues.

There is no rule of law for Palestinians under Israeli military occupation.  For more than five decades, Israel has denied them basic legal due process rights. They have been arbitrarily arrested, detained and imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. Often, after arrest, they have been disappeared to undisclosed sites, subject to abuse and torture.

Much like Israel, the Trump administration has flouted due process and decency to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. And just as Israel uses troops to occupy, patrol and control the West Bank, the Trump administration has also begun using the military for domestic purposes.

In service of his anti-immigrant agenda, Trump has ramped up efforts to federalize the National Guard and to deploy them to American cities he views as oppositional.  Masked Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents have also been let loose into communities across the country.  Suspected illegal immigrants have been arrested and detained—often arbitrarily and violently—with others disappeared to undisclosed sites or illegally deported.

National Guard troops now occupy and patrol Washington, D.C.; and in violation of a district court order, illegally occupy Los Angeles.  Trump has also threatened military occupation of Chicago, Baltimore and other largely Democratic-leaning cities.

Manipulation and Erasure of History

What Washington and Tel Aviv want is the erasure of difficult shameful history and the construction of hegemonic narratives.

For decades Israel has worked mightily to sell its idealist narrative to justify the establishment of a settler-colonial Jewish state on already inhabited land.  It has used empty-land and victimization myths to make its violent dispossession and apartheid occupation of Palestine palatable, largely to the American public.

Until Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the empty land waiting to be colonized fable was the only story that received a hearing or that was deemed credible by many Western governments and media.

Similarly, President Trump, in an effort to move the country toward a Euro-centered narrative, has been advancing a selective sanitized version of history. His administration has taken steps to curtail academic freedom, particularly around discussions of race, gender and systemic oppression.

In March 2025, for example, he arbitrarily issued an executive order titled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”  The directive singles out institutions devoted to preserving heritage and to enhancing knowledge: the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian Institute. Under the category “Saving our Smithsonian,” Trump ordered Vice President J.D. Vance to seek to “remove improper ideology from such properties.”

Conclusion

The global community has suffered from the unholy liaison between U.S. imperialists and Israeli Zionists; none more so than the Palestinians.

Today, the soil of Gaza is drenched in the blood of 200,000 Palestinians because on 7 October 2023, they refused to spend any longer under Zionist-imperialist domination. On that momentous day, Palestinians said, “no more”.

Washington and Tel Aviv have grown ever more coarse, habituated to violence and committed to genocide.  They are now using the tactics and force employed for decades against the Palestinians on their own populations.

The courage of the Palestinians in Gaza has roused the conscience of much of the world.  It has left the global community with lingering consequential issues:

• Will Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians go unpunished?
• Will Israel and the U.S. be allowed to conduct business as usual and remain within the family of nations?
• Will Palestine and the world recover from the nightmare Israel and its U.S. reinforcer has thrust upon us?

The past cannot be recovered, but the future may be salvageable if the visionary question asked and answered by Bob Dylan sixty-two years ago is finally confronted:

“Let me ask you one question; is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness; do you think that it could?

I think you will find, when your death takes its toll,

all the money you made will never buy back your soul.”

Source: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/neither-imperialism-nor-zionism-reclaiming-palestine/