Upstream - [TEASER] Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

You can listen to the full episode "Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl" by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you. There’s a widespread misconception among a significant number of people—including many on the left—that when it comes to the U.S./Israel relationship, it’s Israel that’s pulling the strings. It’s the belief that Israel is pulling the United States into something that it doesn’t want to be involved in, that the Israel lobby has held our policymakers hostage, and that the United States actually really, sincerely cares about the wellbeing of Palestinians, but that the White House, the State Department, and Congress, are all beholden to nefarious Israeli actors. Some even think that blackmail is involved.  There’s something compelling to some about this narrative—it allows them to ignore reality, hiding the blood-soaked stains of U.S. empire under the rug. It conveniently dismisses the fact that the United States is literally built on the bones of the murdered, whether ethnically cleansed Indigenous children, enslaved Africans and their ancestors, or the child workers of the 19th century—to name just a few examples. The U.S. has no qualms about dead children, let alone innocent adults.  And when it comes to so-called Israel, the United States’ relationship with the zionist entity is a relationship with a client state—a state which ultimately serves the interests of U.S. capital and U.S. imperialism more broadly. Don’t be distracted by liberal bloviations and other forms of erroneous analysis—the United States is willfully committed on all levels.  And if you’re asking, well, why? Why is the United States so committed to its relationship with Israel? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to be discussing with this week’s guest. Max Ajl is a Research Fellow at the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Tunis, a Fellow at the University of Ghent, and a researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment. He’s also the author of A People’s Green New Deal and, most recently, a two-part article titled “Palestine’s Great Flood.” Max was also featured prominently in our two-part audio documentary The Green Transition.  In this Patreon episode, Max provides us with a Marxist-Leninst analysis of the U.S.’s relationship with Israel, unpacking how Israel has served as a watchdog for the U.S. in East Asia and how Israel has served the U.S. empire in crushing radical left movements globally—particularly, of course, in Palestine. We also discuss the role of the Israel lobby, the mechanics of imperialism and capital accumulation on a global level, and where the sick, twisted, morbid relationship between the United States and Israel might be headed. Cover illustration: Berwyn Mure Further resources: Max's ResearchGate page Palestine's Great Flood Pt. 1 Palestine's Great Flood Pt. 2 A People's Green New Deal Related episodes: Upstream's Ongoing Palestine Series [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA) Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians Gaza Mutual Aid Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free so we can continue to offer political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. We see all this death, we see the political chaos, the political instability both in the region and in the United States, but from the US perspective these are reasonable prices to pay to get rid of these forces that want to challenge the US order because the US is afraid, the US has always believed in the domino theory. The US has always believed that if one domino falls, if the Palestinians defeat Israel,

if Hezbollah again defeats Israel, then maybe the other portions of the US regional edifice would collapse also. Then maybe other forces on a world scale would also think would collapse also, then maybe other forces on a world scale would also think that the US is defeatable, right? Because we're in the realm of counterfactuals and speculations, you're not going to find the US saying, oh, we're worried that these forces could arise, which could construct autonomous development projects. Like the US defense bureaucracy doesn't talk that way, right? They don't talk that way. They don't talk that way. They don't talk in terms of these counterfactuals that are rendered in my language, which is the language of Arab dependency theory.

Of course they're not going to put it that way. They talk in terms of deterrence. That's their language. They speak the language of the national security bureaucracy. But by deterrence, they mean people doing what they don't want to be done. And what do they not want? They don't want autonomous polls of accumulation. And the entire history of U.S. foreign policy tells us exactly that.

You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond.

There's a widespread misconception among a significant number of people, including many on the left, that when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship, it's Israel that's pulling the strings. It's the belief that Israel is pulling the United States into something that it doesn't want to be involved in, that the Israel lobby has held our policymakers hostage, and that the United States actually really sincerely cares about the well-being of Palestinians, but that the White House, the State Department, and Congress are all beholden to nefarious Israeli actors. Some even think that blackmail is involved.

There is something compelling about this narrative to some. It allows them to ignore reality, hiding the blood-soaked stains of U.S. empire under the rug. It conveniently dismisses the fact that the United States is literally built on the bones of the murdered, whether ethnically cleansed indigenous children, enslaved Africans and their ancestors, or the child workers of the 19th century, to name just a few examples. The United States has no qualms about dead children, let alone Edison adults. And when it comes to so-called Israel, the United States relationship with the Zionist entity is a relationship with

a client state, a state which ultimately serves the interests of U.S. capital and U.S. imperialism more broadly. Don't be distracted by liberal bloviations and other forms of erroneous analysis. The United States is willfully committed on all levels. And if you're asking, well, why? Why is the U.S. so committed to its relationship with Israel? Well, that's exactly what we're going to be discussing with this week's guest, Max Ayal.

Max is a research fellow at the Marian Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Tunis, a fellow at the University of Tunis, a fellow at the University of Ghent, and a researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment. He's also the author of A People's Green New Deal, and most recently, a two-part article titled Palestine's Great Flood. Max was also featured prominently in our two-part audio documentary, The Green Transition. In this Patreon episode, Max provides us with a Marxist analysis of the US's relationship with

Israel, unpacking how Israel has served as a watchdog for the US in East Asia and how Israel has served the US empire in crushing radical left movements globally, particularly of course in Palestine. We also discuss the role of the Israel lobby, the mechanics of imperialism and capital accumulation on a global level, and where the sick, twisted, morbid relationship between the United States and Israel might be headed. And now here's Robert in conversation with Max Eil. Max, it's great to have you back on the show. It's an absolute pleasure.

Thank you for inviting me. So for folks who may have missed our green transition audio documentaries, which you were featured in pretty prominently, I'd say, I'm wondering if you can begin by just briefly introducing yourself for our listeners, giving them a bit of background information on you, like how you came to do the work you're doing and all that stuff. Sure, so my name is Max Ayo and I'm currently a research fellow

at the Miriam Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Tunis and a fellow also at the University of Ghent and I work with a think tank here in Tunis called the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment. I may be better known for having written a book called People's Green New Deal, but my first port of call politically has been and will be until we fix the problem is the the Palestine question

and the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and in fact that is how I got to Tunis and it also very much informed actually the writing of my book on the ecology. I got to Tunis because I came here to work on my Arabic now almost 11 years ago, which is a bit shocking to me, and based on wanting to have more unmediated access to the linguistic sphere associated with the political sphere, which was kind of the mooring point of my political work, namely Palestine and the broader Arab region. And thinking about Palestine really affected and continues to affect how I engage

with the broader ecological question and is a reminder to me and to others, I hope that it forces us to keep in mind a robust understanding of national liberation when we approach any of these kind of general causes within the world system, whether it be the ecological problem, whether it be sustainable agriculture, even whether it be something like communism that we have to start from national liberation, that is the liberation of people, land, and at a more technical level, the productive forces from the grip of monopoly capital.

Yeah, thank you so much for that. And you're really building on a lot of the episodes that we've been having recently on Palestine and on our patreon specifically about. Like you said use imperialism monopoly capitalism and especially our last episode on dialectical materialism where we really talked about the national question. Being the primary contradiction and so I think listeners will be able to make those connections. And I'm really glad that you brought that up in your intro. And yeah, I did invite you on today to talk about the US-Israel relationship and Palestine. And so we'll get into, I'm sure, a lot of the details as we kind of go through the conversation. But just broadly speaking, up top, there seems to be a misconception among many,

including many on the left, that Israel is somehow calling the shots when it comes to its relationship with the US. And I think this analysis has things backwards. You've spoken a lot about this. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about the US's relationship with Israel historically and up to the present just to, you know, do some table setting up front, just to help us understand what role it plays in US imperialism and capital accumulation. the so-called Israeli independence, commonly known amongst civilized people as al-Naqba, the catastrophe, Israel was kind of looked on with some bit of apprehension amongst top

American planners, diplomats, state-departing Arabists, and so forth, which is why the U.S. did not aggressively, aggressively hold the presumption that it should be intervening to support the foundation of Israel. Now, immediately after the Israel military victory over the Arab armies, the U.S. Defense Attaché, the State Department, a lot of people really began to sing a quite different tune. They were quite enchanted with the idea that this European settler state, the settler colonial state had been able to smash up the Arab armies and they said, okay, we actually need to bring these people on board so that they don't fall into the Soviet grip. At that time, the Soviets were unfortunately in a position of supporting the

partition resolution. Now, because of the nature of Israel, because it was a racialized state from the outset, because it was founded based on the iron wall doctrine, that is that Israel needed to establish military superiority and also instill a sense of defeat amongst the Palestinian population and their coreligionist and fellow Arabs in the surrounding region, Israel was in a structural antagonism from the outset, which of course you're in a structural antagonism if your entire project is based on usurping land from people who already live there. You're going to create a sharp tension, friction with the indigenous population. And accordingly, they understood that very well.

So Hartzell was like, we need to create Israel's outpost of civilization against barbarism to hold back the Asian hordes. This is kind of how they tried to sell Israel. Max Nordau and other prominent Zionists had very similar predispositions and so forth. So this was really understood amongst the Zionist ideologues and planners from the late 19th century that the role of Israel would be some kind of imperial gendarme, right? And this was also, it was understood also amongst the

right? And this is also the, there was a, it was understood also amongst the British who were supporting the Zionists, the Yishuv in the pre-state period that they were organic allies because any nationalist compulsion they would have would move in the direction of alliance with imperialism. So after 48, basically until 67, the major Israeli ally amongst the Euro-American states was in fact not America, rather it was France, because France was extremely antagonistic, for example, to Gamal Abdel Nasser for supporting the Algerian Revolution. And just to hop in real quick for folks who may not know who Nasser is, if you could just give a very brief description of him. Gamal Abdel Nasser was the leader of the Free Officers Movement in Egypt and was kind of

the iconic president and standard bearer, flag bearer of Arab nationalism and Arab unity and Arab socialism, which was kind of understood not in class terms, but in populist terms as a project that meant to fight against imperialism, fight for Arab unity, also fight for third world unity. And also furthermore, Gamal Abdel Nasser was kind of trying to build up an autonomous industrial base. He was overseeing Egypt while there were rapid increases in working class well-being, working class salaries. So it was, for its time, it was a relatively radical project, which was then dealt multiple blows by the complex of reactionary colonial and imperialist interests that were allied

with the U.S. or backstopped by theped by the US in the Arab region itself. at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers depending on which tier you subscribe to. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast or at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.