Globalize the Intifada, American-Style

For nearly half a century, the radicals and jihadists of the Middle East have insisted that America is the Great Satan and Israel the Little Satan, a hierarchy first formalized by Ayatollah Khomeini after the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. The labels were never meant as casual insults. They described a worldview in which America represented the corrupting civilizational power and Israel its smaller, poisonous accomplice.

The irony today is that a large and growing number of Americans have embraced half of that worldview with remarkable enthusiasm. They spend enormous energy debating the Little Satan while appearing curiously relaxed about the possibility that the Great Satan is being transformed from within.

Modern American politics has developed a near-religious obsession with Israel. AIPAC has become the universal explanatory device of public life. The Israeli lobby has been elevated from a lobbying organization into a supernatural force apparently capable of controlling the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, Wall Street, Hollywood, the media, and perhaps the weather if given another funding cycle.

The public debate somehow always circles back to the same sacred question: How much of America is controlled by the Israeli lobby?

Not Chinese influence. Not Iranian networks. Not the ideological capture of universities.

Not the steady normalization of views that would have been considered openly anti-American twenty years ago.

The debate over U.S. aid to Israel has become especially revealing. Listening to many, one would think that military assistance to Israel is the principal reason American cities are struggling. Detroit is not suffering from deindustrialization, family breakdown, poor governance, or decades of policy failure. No, the problem is Iron Dome. Chicago is not dealing with crime, corruption, and fiscal dysfunction.........

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