NOTE: The essay below combines two pieces originally posted on my Substack back in August and September 2025. The first made my argument about the nature of the global Zionist project, the second defended this argument from a criticism I received. I have made some minor changes, but the content largely remains the same. This lengthy introduction summarizes the essay and puts it into the context of the ongoing war with Iran. I sincerely thank og_hoopoe, Josh Messite, Nathan Tankus, and all others whose ideas I cite here. I also extend my thanks to the individuals (too many to name) who helped coin the term “Zionist Para-State.”

The Para-State in the War with Iran

“If you believe that you are living in a world that is crashing about your ears, your choice is: A future or no future.”
– Eric Hobsbawm, 1994

American imperialism and its hegemonic position (by extension, the West) have been hijacked by the Zionist project to exclusively serve Jewish settler-colonialism in Palestine and regional domination of the Middle East. I say “hijacked” because Zionism is actively sabotaging American hegemony by destroying the US-constructed global world order, American soft power, American prospects in great power competition, and now international maritime commerce in the Gulf (thus the global economy). This hijacking was accomplished by the “Zionist Para-State,” the extremely well-integrated and highly disciplined international class fraction and mass fascist movement whose uniting ideology is Zionism. The Para-State primarily operates through rigorous ideological indoctrination, gangsterish coercion, and blackmail in the halls of power (e.g., electoral politics, academia, media, business). It is, therefore, a specifically elite phenomenon. In this respect, it serves as a device against democratic government and civil society, naturally attracting the most viciously reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie and political movements. However, this is only half of the Zionist Para-State. The other half is its fanatical mass base of Jews across the world, who effectively reproduce the Zionist Para-State through Jewish institutions and networks of power. Jewish communities agitate, fundraise, and provide manpower for Zionism, whether in Israel proper or abroad. In doing so, they function as the spearhead of fascist politics in their countries.

The Zionist Para-State emerged over the history of Zionist relations with the great powers, which were always a mere tactic in the objective of advancing Jewish settler-colonialism. The Zionist alliance with Western imperialism has led to some confusion over its exact nature. Historically, Marxists argued that the Zionist project was an arm of Western imperialism in the Middle East, acting to secure Western interests in and geopolitical control of the region. This was true, but it was not the essential nature of Zionism, which was settler-colonialism.^[1] The Zionist alliance with Western imperialism was conjunctural while its settler-colonial nature was structural. That is to say, Zionist service to Western imperial powers was ultimately secondary to how these powers could support Jewish settler-colonialism in Palestine. A foreign lobby was essential to securing support for Zionist objectives in the Middle East. This is best shown by the instrumental relations the Zionist project maintained with individual great powers. They were first allies with Britain, but when Britain inconvenienced Zionism–namely, by imposing restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1939–the Zionists revolted and waged an anti-British insurgency. In 1948, the nascent Israeli state waged the Nakba against the Palestinian people with the avid military support of the East Bloc. The Israelis soon dropped their short-lived alliance with the East Bloc and entered into one with France during the 1950s-60s on the basis of shared anti-Arabism. French support began to dissipate in the mid-60s, and in 1967, Israel roundly defeated the Soviet-backed Arab armies in the Six-Day War. This drew the attention of the US, so Israel yet again dropped one alliance (with France) for another, this time with America. The Americo-Israeli alliance would prove to be the most profitable and essential to the advancement of the Zionist project.

It was in this final alliance that the Zionist Para-State had its most proximate roots. Israel realized that it could never gain a better ally than the US. This meant that Israel would (theoretically) never have a reason to rebel against the US, as it did with Britain, which had proven itself not entirely useful for Zionism. However, nothing yet guaranteed that the US would not realize, as Britain had done, that Zionism could cause problems for its imperial hegemony. To guarantee that the US never drew such a conclusion, Israel both made itself a highly valuable American ally–an “Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier”–and created a powerful political machine that curried support among American politicians–the Israel Lobby. The power of the Lobby first grew out of Israel’s role as a permanent aircraft carrier for the US. But recall that Zionist service to broader Western (in this case, American) imperialism was ultimately secondary to its own nature as a settler-colonial project. Zionism would always need American support, regardless of how useful Israel would be to the US. The task of the Lobby, then, was to ensure American support even if Israel jeopardized American interests. Over the decades, the Lobby grew from a political pressure group into an extremely sophisticated network of power spanning the entire American and Western establishment.

The Lobby’s final transformation into the Zionist Para-State was inextricably linked with the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and its precursors during the 1990s. GWOT effectively transposed Zionist ideology, racial supremacist fanaticism, and vicious militarism to the entire globe, while assimilating the Zionist political mode into the very heart of the American state. This is not to suggest that such maliciously reactionary politics were alien to the US–in reality, the US was the first “Zionist” project^[2]–but that the particular form of these politics was highly inflected with the Israeli worldview. For instance, although Israel remained subordinate to the US during the Bush administration, the two were identical in all essential aspects. The decades of GWOT inculcated a Zionist-type worldview throughout the American establishment, making the jump to Zionism proper not a jump at all. This was the final political victory of the Zionist Para-State over the American imperial state, as represented by the genocidal butchers Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

On 2 March, Marco Rubio effectively confirmed the thesis of the Zionist Para-State when he told reporters: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” Instead of halting an Israeli attack on Iran–and entirely avoiding any attack on American forces–the American state took for granted that it would have to “preemptively” defend Israel from the consequences of its aggression. Thus, the US ignited a total regional war in the Middle East that has massively disrupted the global economy. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, blocking a quarter of global crude oil and liquified natural gas traffic, in addition to one third of the most common fertilizer. If this war is not halted, the downstream effects will be cataclysmic. The war has already caused oil prices to skyrocket, causing jumps in fuel prices across the world, especially Asia and Europe, where many countries have very short fuel reserves. Major world economies will grind to a halt once fuel runs out. The squeeze on fertilizers may even cause food shortages in dozens of countries, potentially leading to bread riots, while the wartime damage to the Gulf Arab states has led them to consider withdrawing promised investments from the West to shore up domestic society.^[3] The orderly functioning of the global economy is the vital interest of any global hegemon because the very nature of global hegemony means that all large institutions and structures–especially the economy–serve the relevant hegemon. There is no normal scenario where this war serves American imperial interests. It is only in the extremely strange scenario where the Zionist Para-State has captured the American state that such a war could possibly be viewed as advantageous.

For the same reason that global disruption is disastrous to the US, it is existentially vital for the survival of the Iranian state and Iran as a nation. Only through the expansion and intensification of the crisis will enemies of Iran finally withdraw. This is the logic of strategic accelerationism, the essence of which is embracing chaos–the proverbial “fire”–as a central imperative. This is best illustrated by quotes from three individuals. First, from the Salafi Jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its flames will continue to intensify until it incinerates the Crusader armies in Dabiq.” Second, from the late Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar: “The longer the war of attrition lasts and the more it expands, the closer we get to Jerusalem–and it may last longer than some expect.” Third, from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Beghaei: “The process that has begun will soon engulf Europe. The fire that the US and the Zionist regime ignited will engulf the entire world.” In orchestrating the October 7 raids, the Gaza Hamas leadership–particularly Sinwar, Muhammad Dhayf, and Marwan Issa–sought to break the stasis that had been strangling the Palestinian cause.

As of 6 October, one day before the raids, 2023 had been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank. The Abraham Accords were moving at full pace, with Saudi Arabia as the next most likely member. Most agreed that the Palestinian cause was at serious risk of final defeat. The much vaunted “Axis of Resistance” had entered a state of passivity, led by the so-called “strategic patience” of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Axis doctrine had held that the final showdown with Israel would come only once Israel attacked. But the Palestinian cause could not wait that long. The status quo had to be broken with a dramatic act, creating a singularity in which all previous lessons no longer held true. October 7 was intended to ignite a regional wildfire, dragging all actors into a realm so far unknown that only Hamas could determine the course of events. A global crisis was the central objective of the operation, not a byproduct of it. The world of October 6 is dead, and the war since then has been over who would claim the future. Sinwar, Dhayf, and Issa sought to forcibly move the center of the Axis from Tehran (and the passivity of the IRI) to Gaza (and the urgency of the Palestinian cause).^[4] They hoped that the Axis would initiate the total regional war–and embrace the global crisis it would engender–shortly after the operation, when the terms were still favorable. Unfortunately, this did not come to pass, and the Axis suffered terrible blows for the next two years. Yet, despite all this, the operation succeeded when Israel attacked Iran in June 2025. The Twelve-Day War set the chain of events that has led us to now. The total regional war and the resulting global crisis finally came. With no end in sight to this war, the October 7 raids achieved exactly what they set out to do. The way out of this crisis is therefore not to halt it–thus ceding control once more to the US and Israel–but through it, by expanding and intensifying it at all costs and wresting control of the flames from Western hands. The historical roots of the crisis are in Western control of the Middle East. The crisis will not end until this control has been eliminated. As numerous Iranian officials have now told the world, chaos–or a “big fire”–is the only way to achieve this.^[5]

THESIS

Introduction

As the Gaza Genocide enters its third year and its worst stage yet, one question continues to go unanswered: What exactly compels such fanatical Western support for Israel? Until recently, there were two contending theories, colloquially called the Israel Lobby and the Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier.^[6] The former theory argues that Western support for Israel is due to the longstanding power and influence of Zionist political lobbying in the US and other Western governments, while the latter argues that Western support for Israel is due to Israel’s strategic role as Western muscle in the Middle East, serving as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” against Western enemies, as reported in a speech by Reaganite Secretary of State Alexander Haig.^[7] Realist scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously made the Israel Lobby case in their book of the same name. Meanwhile, the Aircraft Carrier theory was most promoted by the Axis of Resistance, particularly the late Hassan Nasrallah, who always asserted that it was ultimately the US that controlled Israel, not the reverse.

For several reasons, the Aircraft Carrier theory had greater currency than the Israel Lobby theory in Marxist and anti-imperialist circles. First, it had the endorsement of the main anti-Zionist forces in the Middle East, with the official backing of no less than Nasrallah, whose victories over Israel in 2000 and 2006 gave him considerable prestige. Second, the theory took its very name from the highest ranks of the US government, including Genocide Joe, who went so far as to claim that if Israel did not exist, the US would have to invent it to preserve US interests. This explanation was well in keeping with Zionist history, with Theodor Herzl himself describing the Zionist project as “a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Later, the first British military governor of Jerusalem described Zionism as “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.” Third, the theory intuitively fits Marxist historical materialism. The Israel Lobby theory contends that a parochial political lobby makes Western governments act against their own imperial interests. In contrast, the Aircraft Carrier theory proposed a very simple position: Western governments support Israel because Israel serves their interests.

However, the devastating defeat of the Axis of Resistance (including Nasrallah’s death), the deranged Zionist hysteria of the Western establishment, and the apparent lack of any logical explanation for this hysteria have challenged the Aircraft Carrier theory. When put to the ultimate test–halting the genocide in Gaza–the theory led to catastrophic results. In the unwise hope that the US would eventually stop Israel, the Axis of Resistance steadily let itself be destroyed. With these results, in comes “ZOG theory,” which has gained prominence in left-wing discourse in recent months. The Israel Lobby theory has undergone radicalization in content and name. It is no longer the “Israel Lobby” but the “Zionist Occupied Government,” or “ZOG,” based on the old Nazi conspiracy theory which claimed that Jews controlled the US government to oppress white people. These hideous origins have been pushed aside due to the concept’s intuitive and useful name, but it raises the question of whether it is possible to discard such baggage. When taken literally, “ZOG” seems self-evidently true, but perhaps the better term is the “Zionist Para-State,” reflecting the well-organized, parallel, and independent character of Zionism. I will define this term at the end. Due to this Para-State, the entire Western establishment is dedicated to slaughtering Palestinians, destroying all (potential) enemies of Israel, and persecuting non-Jews to serve Jewish Supremacy (better known as Zionism). The US and almost all other Western governments serve Zionism with no regard to even Western strategic interests, still less the democratic demands of Western populations.

Indeed, from a “rational” perspective, nothing explains Western support for Israel. The genocide has significantly destabilized and weakened the carefully constructed Western regional order of the Middle East. The region has been on the brink of total regional war for almost two years. If this war ever breaks out, it would forever end Western control of the Middle East and perhaps even the Zionist project in one stroke. With the defeat of Hizbullah, the collapse of the Assad regime, and the cowing of Iran, Israel has achieved unprecedented regional dominance. Yet, it continues in its barbaric campaign against the Palestinian people of Gaza and against Iran. Hamas still fights, but realistically, it poses no existential threat to Israel. Had Israel ended the genocide within a few months of October 7, the Western political position would be far better than it is today, even with an unfavorable ceasefire deal. The Western establishment would still retain broad popular support and could likely continue the now-failed Abraham Accords. Instead, Israel is a deeply reviled pariah state, whose international isolation slowly but surely intensifies with each passing day, ruining Western global political standing in the process.^[8]

As a result, the terms of the debate over the West’s relationship with Israel have changed. The Aircraft Carrier theory is unchanged, but the Israel Lobby theory has become the “ZOG” theory. Of the two, “ZOG” is the better explanation of Western support for Israel, but it is still insufficient on its own (not to mention ugly), and its material origins must still be explained. The Aircraft Carrier theory once had real explanatory value, but at a certain point, “ZOG” (or more precisely, the Zionist Para-State) became the true answer. I hope to sketch–and only sketch–the process by which this came to be the case.

The Israel Lobby’s Transubstantiation into “ZOG”

As for Israel, it is all too often forgotten that if this country represents a spearhead of imperialism in the particular present international context of antagonism between the two great blocs, this is only a result of special circumstances. Its true nature is to be a mass of small ‘white’ settlers spreading out more and more to colonize an under-developed territory. It is this that makes their conflict with the peoples of the region so ruthless, even where the latter live under pro-Western regimes which are themselves the satellites of imperialism. In spite of its circumstantial and unnatural alliance with American imperialism (which is not all that reliable, as the recent quarrel about frontiers with William Rogers shows), Israel is a secessionist colonial state. Its foundation was the object of a long and bloody struggle with England, who played the role of the imperialist parent country.^[9]

So wrote Arghiri Emmanuel in 1972. In other words, Israel did not begin as the specific project of any one imperial power but as a settler secessionist state which instrumentally allied with Western imperialist regimes to advance its settler-colonial project. Israel, therefore, served as a spearhead for Western imperialism writ large but not reliably for any one imperialist power. By the time of Emmanuel’s article, Zionism had established its Western imperial credentials by dividing the Arab world with its mere existence, consistently suppressing Pan-Arabism, and aiding far-right projects (like Apartheid South Africa^[10]) across the world. Collectively, it served Western imperialism well, but on an individual basis, Israel was remarkably fickle and disloyal. It had demonstrated no real allegiance to any single power, freely jumping from one to another to strengthen itself. This reflected the specifically Jewish nature of Zionist colonialism. Since Jews are dispersed across the West, Israel could seek support from the entire West, but it was bound to no one state. The lack of a distinctly localized metropolitan population was a potent asset.^[11]

Israeli partnership with a specific imperialist state was contingent on this state’s patronage of Zionist settler-colonialism, which was the project’s first and foremost priority. Once this was jeopardized, as when the British colonial government insufficiently acquiesced to Zionism, the Zionist project turned on its sponsor, as when it commenced a sustained insurgency against Britain. Zionism soon began searching for a new ally, and during the Nakba, found one in the East Bloc, which supplied it with significant weaponry due to the idiotic belief that Israel would become a Soviet-aligned state. Israel then turned to France, which became its close ally during the 1950s-60s due to the shared hostility to rising Arab nationalism. France significantly armed Israel by providing advanced aircraft and sharing nuclear weapons technology. Israel reciprocated by attacking Nassirist Egypt and advising France’s war against Algeria. With the subsequent defeat in Algeria, France’s anti-Arabism dissipated, and the country soon adopted a conciliatory relationship with the Arab world. The basis of French support for Israel collapsed, leading Israel to again search for a new patron. Zionist success during the Six-Day War brought it to the attention of the US, which was highly impressed by Israeli military prowess, leading the two countries to form a deep alliance, which continues to this day.

By this point in history, one can justifiably argue the Aircraft Carrier theory of Zionism. Time and again, it had proven its usefulness to Western imperialism by disciplining and attacking anti-imperialist (i.e., anti-Western) projects in the Arab World. This served as the material basis for Western support. After the Six-Day War, which hugely damaged Arab nationalism, Israel now had the sponsorship of the premier imperialist power of the world. There could be no better ally to Jewish settler-colonialism than the US, so the task was to ensure that the US never ceased its support. Other Western powers had come to realize that Israel often caused more trouble than it was worth–for example, the British Tories developed an Arabist streak in direct response to the Zionist insurgency during the Mandatory Period. No such realization could be allowed to come to the US. The Zionist strategy was two-fold. On the one hand, Israel would continue proving its usefulness in attacking and dismembering the Arab World. On the other hand, Israel (and its supporters abroad) would wage a sustained political campaign within the US to create ideological commitment to Zionism–that is to say, it would create the Israel Lobby.

Israel’s role as an unsinkable aircraft carrier (or fleet of carriers) in the Middle East was the material basis for the emergence and strengthening of the Israel Lobby. As Israel served US interests, the Lobby systematically propagandized several generations of US politicians. The American political elite came to support Israel increasingly out of Zionist ideological conviction, rather than strict geopolitical assessment. Biden is the perfect case of this phenomenon, expressing the political realist case for Israel, while fanatically endorsing Zionist ideology as such. In parallel to this process, Jewish communities in the US (and elsewhere) became Zionist and formed the mass base and cadre of “diaspora”^[12] Zionism in general and the Israel Lobby in particular. Jewish institutions became enthusiastic agents of Zionism, achieving an extremely high degree of ideological uniformity and discipline among Jews, who became Zionist “foot-soldiers” outside Israel. In the process, Zionist Jews (oftentimes outright Israelis) inter-married and socially co-mingled with the non-Jewish American (and broader Western) elite. Zionism thus developed significant influence in the media, academia, business, and politics, to the point that Zionist Jews could harass and witch-hunt anyone who criticized Zionism. In sum, this normalized and legitimized Zionism to non-Jews. This is best observed in the emergence of Christian Zionist politics, which was ultimately the work of Jewish Zionists, who sought to expand the domestic base from Jews, a small (albeit well-organized) minority, to the far more numerous Evangelical Christian public. American and Western Jews thus served as the Zionist rearguard while Israel served as the Zionist spearhead.

The net result of this process was the formation of a highly disciplined Zionist mass base (Western, especially American, Jewry) and an equally disciplined Zionist political machine. This was symbiotic with but ultimately independent of Israel’s utility as a Western outpost in the Middle East. As established above, this utility was a means of securing support for Jewish settler-colonialism in the Levant, which was the project’s true end. Israel may cease to be useful for Western imperialism–or merely become less useful than in the past–but this would not change the nature of the Zionist project, which, to again cite Emmanuel, “is to be a mass of small ‘white’ settlers spreading out more and more to colonize an under-developed territory.” With the defeat of all anti-imperialist forces in the Middle East, Israel had largely fulfilled its strategic purpose for the West. It no longer needed to destroy anti-imperialist forces because they were eliminated or too weak to meaningfully threaten Western power. However, Zionism had not fulfilled its own strategic aim of forming a purely Jewish Greater Israel, so US and Western support–and therefore Zionist politics abroad–was still vitally important. This turning point came in the early 1990s, and it is during these years that the Aircraft Carrier steadily began transforming into the Zionist Para-State.

This transformation coincided with the end of the Cold War and the development of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which was the ideology and apparatus of American unipolarity.^[13]The political defeat of communism brought about the “End of History,” wherein the final stage of human civilization was Western liberal democracy, which could only be incrementally refined, not fundamentally changed, let alone defied. With the apparent end of politics as such, this meant that any opposition to the West was not a political challenge, but a barbaric assault on civilization itself. Resistance to Western hegemony was cast in distinctly apolitical terms. One can observe this in the American intervention in Somalia during the 1990s, when the Somali Civil War was framed as incomprehensible, timeless African warlordism. This was particularly the case with the infamous 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, during which 18 US troops would be killed and over 70 wounded. The incident was later memorialized in the film Black Hawk Down, which cast the Somali militants as faceless, savage black hordes overrunning the white aryan American super-soldiers. Within a year of the East Bloc’s collapse, political violence–particularly against American hegemony–was being framed in the apolitical, non-ideological terms of civilization against barbarism.

It is no coincidence that this framing was the Zionist outlook of the world.^[14] Israel and Jewish Zionists had always demonized Palestinian militants as “terrorists” and Palestinian national aspirations as “terrorism.” Palestinian resistance to Zionism was evacuated of political content to delegitimize resistance as such. If Palestinians were savages, then they did not have any aspirations at all, still less aspirations that were moral and just. Terrorists seek to bring terror as an end unto itself. The term “terrorism” is suggestive. Zionists (and the GWOT apparatus) used “terrorism” as if it were a political ideology in and of itself, but historically, “terrorism” simply referred to a set of tactics in a broader political struggle. One was not a terrorist for the sake of “terrorism,” but used terrorist tactics to advance specific political aims. However, in the Zionist imagination, any and all challenge to Jewish settler-colonialism was unknowable “terrorism” against civilized society. It was on the pretext of “combatting terrorism” that Israel invaded and occupied Lebanon, killing tens of thousands in the process–with the enthusiastic support and backing of Jews from the US and the broader West. One can immediately see how this would be a model for the later GWOT.

During the 1990s, there were two key political developments that ran in parallel: the rise of Sunni Jihadism as a threat to American hegemony, and the intensification of Zionist agitation against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The growth of jihadist politics in the Muslim World brought to US attention the threat of “terrorism” as a force to be combatted and eliminated. Various Al Qaida plots against US assets, such as the 1998 East Africa US Embassy bombings, raised alarms in Washington and made the US government begin to reorient its military from great power conflict to counter-terrorism.^[15] These took on the character of international policing actions rather than proper wars, as “war” suggests that both sides are equally legitimate political actors, while “policing actions” suggest that the target is an illegitimate violation of the social order.

During this same period, Israel and Jewish Zionists abroad began to militantly propagandize against Iran, which, after the devastating Iran-Iraq War, had been actively seeking to normalize relations with the West to end its international isolation. This was particularly the case under the leadership of Reformist President Mohammad Khatami. Realistically, Iran no longer posed a real threat to Western interests–in fact, it signaled acquiescence to such interests–but Israel had different aims than stabilizing Western control of the region. On the one hand, it sought to secure Arab-Israeli normalization by portraying itself as a partner against the “Iranian threat.” On the other hand, it sought to justify continued Western hostility to Iran and therefore the pretext for Western support to Israel. If Iran were a threat, then Israel would be the best regional opponent.^[16] Both of these aims were tactics in the broader strategy to shore up Jewish settler-colonialism. The 1990s were the time of the Oslo Accords and seeming progress on the Two-State Solution, which Israel completely rejected because it legitimized Palestinian claims on Palestine. The specter of the “Iranian threat” could accelerate Arab normalization with Israel without the concession of a Palestinian state, while securing Western support for Israel and therefore its settler project.

In reality, a Two-State Solution and normalization with Iran would have been in American long-term interests because these moves would have greatly stabilized the Middle East under pro-Western auspices.^[17] In a period of undisputed American hegemony (as in the 1990s), no state–especially fledgling ones like a would-be Palestinian state or the rebuilding Islamic Republic–would dare anger the US. Yet Zionism was able to override these long-term calculations. How? In large part because of the Israel Lobby, its mass base of Jews in the US, and the extensive Zionist machine it had built in American politics, media, and business–that is, “ZOG.” Recall: The function of the “diaspora” Zionist movement was to secure perpetual US support for Zionism, not to optimally serve US imperial interests. Serving US interests was merely a means to the end of furthering Zionist settler-colonialism and regional hegemony. The Aircraft Carrier was steadily taking over the Navy, as it were. “ZOG,” or the Zionist Para-State, was taking shape.

The 9/11 attacks were the ultimate catalyst for this process, as they provided the pretext for GWOT proper and therefore the complete assimilation of the Zionist political gaze into the metropolitan center. In other words, GWOT was the inflection point when the Aircraft Carrier decisively became “ZOG.” Israel could once again prove its utility–this time, with its “counter-terror” expertise–and re-secure unquestioned US support for Zionism. The Two State Solution became rhetoric to disguise intensifying Jewish settler-colonialism and the continued political dismemberment of the Palestinian people. Further, GWOT ideology shared all essential features of Zionism–from raging Islamophobia and anti-Arabism to hysterical “counter-terrorism”–so its proliferation effectively proselytized Zionism to the American ruling elite and public. Indeed, many GWOT ideologues upheld Israel as the political ideal–a state whose very ethos was “combatting terrorism,” or more bluntly, exterminating Arabs and Muslims. It is worth noting that while the Bush administration essentially endorsed Zionist ideology, it still reigned in the worst of Zionism to preserve broader US interests–“ZOG” was not yet in total control. For example, the Bush administration backed the 2005 Gaza Withdrawal and harshly condemned Israeli strikes on Palestinian militants that killed many civilians. In those days, “many” often meant about ten, which pales in comparison to the hundreds of Palestinians wantonly slaughtered every day for the past two and a half years. However, as GWOT expanded, so too did ambient Zionist influence, for a sanitized Zionism is still Zionism. Likewise, Jewish Zionists in the US and the broader West continued to agitate, organize, and struggle in service to Israel as the ideal “counter-terror” partner.

The cumulative effect of the decades of Zionist organizing fused with GWOT is a political and media establishment that is highly ideologically sympathetic to Zionism, an extremely well-disciplined global political movement for Zionism, and a planetary military apparatus that almost entirely endorses the central tenets of Zionism. In sum, fervent support for Israel and Jewish Supremacy spans the entire political spectrum in nearly every Western state (with some exceptions like Spain). However, it is worth noting that “ZOG” did not smoothly achieve hegemony. Indeed, hegemony arrived by twists and turns, perhaps the most important of which was the Barack Obama administration. In no sense was Obama an anti- or non-Zionist, but the Zionist political movement still deeply hated and resented him, in part out of simple racism. In spite of Obama’s strong support for Israel, Zionists still felt that they had to compensate for perceived “setbacks” and ensure that an especially favorable president came to power–namely, Donald Trump. Despite the Democratic Party’s hysterics about “Russiagate,” in reality the true foreign actor backing Trump was Israel, particularly the Likud Party, which was a key (but partial) factor in his victory. The Trump administration repaid the favor first through US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, then through the Abraham Accords, which commenced Arab-Israel normalization by entirely bypassing Palestinians. The Biden administration independently continued the Abraham Accords and then enthusiastically backed the Israeli genocide in Gaza by becoming an active party and belligerent. Despite Biden’s rabid Zionism, Israel and the American Zionist movement strongly backed Trump’s re-election, thus further radicalizing the US’s already fanatical support for the genocide, most horrifically in the form of the total starvation campaign. This brings us to today with “ZOG” in undisputed control.

The Zionist Para-State Defined

I have used the term “ZOG” throughout this analysis, but at the start, I conceded that the term was insufficient (let alone highly problematic). I proposed the term “Zionist Para-State” as an alternative. It is now time to precisely define this term and explain the nature of the US-Israel relationship, particularly by tying together several conceptual threads first shared on Twitter.

As a settler-colonial project and a major regional power, Israel is an empire within the broader US empire, much like Old South Africa was under the British (then American) Empire.^[18] This gives it significant clout and the ability to make its own decisions independent of the US. In this respect, Israel is quite typical of settler-colonial projects within broader imperial projects. Its periodic frictions with its metropolitan patrons are similarly typical and well in keeping with historical cases of settler-colonialism (e.g., the Thirteen Colonies, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa under Britain). Nothing about the relationship is unusual in this respect.

However, Israel is unique in the extent to which its elite and broader population are consanguineous and culturally co-mingled with their metropolitan counterparts. Oftentimes, American politicians, media figures, academics, or businessmen are US-Israeli dual-nationals. US diplomat Amos Hochstein was an IDF paratrooper, Benjamin Netanyahu grew up and studied in Philadelphia, and Unit 8200 operative Barak Ravid has a personal line to Trump. Similarly, the most vicious West Bank settlers are usually American-born and raised. There is an incredibly high degree of intermixing between American (but broadly Western) and Israeli Jewry, which means that the latter’s political aims automatically become the former’s political aims. When coupled with the power of the Lobby (in all of its aspects as discussed above), this grants Zionism a remarkable amount of influence over Western politics. The movement has cadres not only in the settler vanguard but throughout the metropolitan center. In this sense, the elites of the entire West have merged into one transnational unit. This also ties into elite anti-majoritarian politics, which seek to restrict political life to a special social strata. This strata is today identified and shaped by Zionism, whereas in the past it was anti-communism, reflecting the transformation of the Aircraft Carrier (a tool against communism) into the Zionist Para-State (when the tool takes over).^[19]

However, given the essentially parochial interests of Zionism, Israel’s character in relation to its sponsors is also quite unique in settler-colonial history. Since it has no interest in broader imperial stability, it will aggressively pursue its own settler aims and forcibly enlist its imperial backer through the metropolitan Zionist apparatus (the Para-State). As the historically latest settler-colonial project, Zionism has learned from all of Western imperialist history and is therefore a particularly malignant and retrograde form of Western colonialism. This means that it can use its metropolitan influence to pursue its ultra-reactionary project to the direct detriment of long-term (or in the present case, short-term) imperialist interests. In so doing, Israel acts as a parasitic entity on its imperialist hosts, and the basis of this parasitism is the socio-cultural merger of its own and the hosts’ ruling elites with the Zionist apparatus acting as the nexus.^[20] In short, the Zionist Para-State is the complete merger of the Western elite and Israeli population into one transnational political entity (a class fraction plus mass base) with its own aims which instrumentalizes Western imperialism in service to Jewish settler-colonialism, regardless of the latter’s strategic costs to the former.

For this reason, there will likely never come a point when the West decides that Israel costs more than it is worth. What is more likely is that Israel will rebel against the West for perceived sleights and restrictions (the products of Western anti-Zionist democratic pressure). In this way, Arghiri Emmanuel’s prediction that Israel would ultimately secede from its imperialist patrons would come true. I contend that this secession will not be a split from Western imperialism but within Western imperialism, hence why the West has not yet dropped Israel. Splitting from the West is easier than splitting the West itself–the latter has a much higher threshold that has not yet been broken. If this ever takes place, it would be an enormous, perhaps near-existential, blow to Western power.

As regards the anti-Zionist movement in the West, the debate over the Aircraft Carrier or the Zionist Para-State doubles as a debate over the responsibility of Western Jews in the present crisis. The Zionist Para-State position makes the Israeli genocide a specifically Jewish issue, rendering Jews writ large culpable for their complicity and even participation in the genocide as mediated by the Para-State. In contrast, the Aircraft Carrier position makes the genocide a vague conception of American imperialist interests, which in practice leads to a failure (if not inability) to adequately challenge Jewish Supremacy (the essence of Zionism). The focus is directed to an amorphous structure of interests, rather than specific individuals and institutions. Consider: If the genocide is ultimately in American imperialist interests–or in other words, purely American directed–then this would imply that American synagogues hosting auctions of stolen West Bank land are ultimately serving another force in the US, rather than driving Zionism on their own. If the Zionist Para-State theory is true, then this means that a vital component of anti-Zionist strategy in the West is to fight and break the rabid Zionism of Jewish communities: disrupting stolen land auctions, sabotaging IDF fundraising and recruitment drives, denouncing and attacking fascist views pushed by Jewish religious-cultural organizations, etc. Jewish grassroots culpability in this genocide must therefore take center stage in the anti-Zionist struggle. As Dr. Israel Shahak wrote in his masterful book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: “The extent of the persecution and discrimination against non-Jews inflicted by the ‘Jewish state’ with the support of organised diaspora Jews is also enormously greater than the suffering inflicted on Jews by regimes hostile to them. Although the struggle against antisemitism (and of all other forms of racism) should never cease, the struggle against Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism, which must include a critique of classical Judaism, is now of equal or greater importance.”

DEFENSE

I am happy to see that my recent essay on the relationship between the West, particularly the US, and Israel–which I called the Zionist Para-State–has stirred real discussion. To recall, I argued that “the Zionist Para-State is the complete merger of the Western elite and Israeli population into one transnational political entity with its own aims which instrumentalizes Western imperialism in service to Jewish settler-colonialism, regardless of the latter’s strategic costs to the former.” I have received much feedback (this comment is particularly worth reading), with one common criticism being my reliance on the (neo)realist concept of strict interests. This is the core of Kali de Armas’ thought-provoking reply to me, where he makes his own case about the “Special Relationship” between the US and Israel. I encourage everyone to read his essay. He raises many important points–though I am unconvinced by most of them–which highlight weaknesses in my original argument that I aim to address here. Kali identifies our disagreement:

What is actually at stake here is not really a question of “lobbying vs. power projection” but one of “interest vs. noninterest.” Are Western governments and politicians working in their own interests or have they been manipulated into working against their own interests?

I contend that the Western establishment is not working in Western strategic interests, but Kali argues:

The reality is that the U$-i$raeli alliance is structured by a large ensemble of mutually beneficial systems and dynamics that ultimately serve the interests of both parties. When we start from an analysis of the real relations between the two, rather than from preexisting models, we discover not a zero-sum game but a deeply symbiotic relationship.

This is close to the thesis of Ali Kadri and his students, and it shares the same theoretical problem: It explains why the US (and the West) supports Israel at all, but not why the US categorically refuses to assert itself and end the crisis, instead supporting a genocide that harms American global hegemony. Put another way, Kali demonstrates how the Zionist Para-State works, but not why it works or has such power. This flaw detracts from many (but not all) of his key points of argument. I will address only the most salient ones.

Internalization of Costs

Kali begins by analyzing US military aid to Israel, which is sent as Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a program that conditions US financial military aid to foreign countries on purchasing products exclusively from American weapons firms. As a result:

This system forms a triangle of benefits, serving the interests of all parties involved. From the i$raeli perspective, it is easy to see what they gain. They receive free weapons. […] It is equally obvious what amerikkkan weapon’s manufacturers get out of the deal: money. The FMF program is essentially a subsidy for these firms, increasing demand for their products.

So far, Kali’s analysis is compatible with the Zionist Para-State thesis, the essence of which is the fusion of the American (and Western) elite with Zionism. That both Israel and the Western establishment benefit from the arrangement is not in dispute–fusion means that they benefit (and suffer) together. Instead, the dispute is whether this arrangement is to the long-term benefit of the West as a whole, which Kali does not answer. Although this distinction may seem dubious, it highlights a key symptom of political crisis: when political leaders are unable to see or pursue the interests of the system they serve, in large part due to the system’s very own functioning. As Immanuel Wallerstein put it, crisis is “a failure of the system because of the operation of the system itself.” We will return to this theme in the conclusion. Kali next unpacks the third side of the triangle of benefits:

And despite what “ZOG” type analysis would have you believe, the U$ government also benefits in several ways. First, subsidizing U$ manufacturing has the usual Keynesian motivations and benefits. Second, during periods where the U$ military may not be actively engaged in combat, this external demand helps to prevent the atrophy of the country’s military-industrial base. […] Third, by inserting itself as a crucial actor in the military budgeting and strategizing of i$rael, the U$ secures itself a privileged position in i$raeli politics and even some command over the actions of the Zionist Occupation Forces. What we see is not one-sided manipulation or coercion but a harmony of interests. Every side of the triangle reinforces every other side. As such, in the pursuit of its own interests, the amerikkkan government necessarily also serves the interests of i$rael, and the same can be said in the other direction. [Emphasis mine]

The first and second points are valid, but the third point, particularly in italics, is highly questionable in light of the regional crisis since October 7 (and now the war on Iran). Many observers have conflated the US’s fanatical support for Israeli aggression with planning and orchestration of the aggression. This conflation is false. Nearly all signs indicate that Israel has been driving the crisis with the US following its lead (but this certainly does not mean that the US is not the main co-author of the genocide and regional crisis)

The first war against Hizbullah and Lebanon is illustrative. In the months preceding it, most newspapers and think tanks reported on Washington’s growing alarm at the prospect of regional war and the subsequent attempts to secure a preemptive ceasefire.^[21] For example, in March 2024, Centre for Strategic & International Studies–a think tank close to the US military establishment–released a report arguing that “the United States needs to increase diplomatic efforts to prevent an all-out war, which would be devastating for both Lebanon and Israel and ignite a broader conflagration in an already combustible region, including triggering more attacks on U.S. forces.”^[22] However, Israel categorically refused to support such efforts and instead pushed ahead with its aggression on Lebanon.

During the summer of 2024, the US continued its efforts to secure a ceasefire of some kind, while still supporting Israel in its continued aggression and preparing for full-blown war with Lebanon. The contradiction was at a root level, where the US sought to both preempt war and support Israel at all costs. The onus was therefore on Israel, which understood that it was better to act unilaterally and ask for forgiveness than to wait and ask for permission. Through escalating strikes–such as top-level assassinations, air raids on heavy weaponry, and covert operations–Israel demonstrated Hizbullah’s weakness to the US. More importantly, it presented the US with a fait accompli: War on Lebanon. By the time of the invasion, Israel had rendered a ceasefire impossible, requiring the US to support its campaign despite the seeming costs. The US did not expect Hizbullah’s devastating defeat, which is best seen in a February 2025 report from the Modern War Institute, the US Army’s official think tank:

Similarly, Israel’s two-pronged war against Hamas and Hezbollah has produced outcomes few expected. Before the conflict, Israeli military leaders assessed Hezbollah as the greater strategic threat. […]

And yet, despite these disparities, Hezbollah suffered a rapid military defeat and accepted an unfavorable ceasefire, while Hamas held out in the face of a fifteen-month Israeli military campaign until Israel agreed to a ceasefire deal that effectively had been on the table for the better part of a year.^[23]

The author’s pleasant surprise is apparent, indicating both the US’s reluctance to unilaterally escalate against Hizbullah and its positive reception to the results of Zionist aggression. Israeli bellicosity was the essential factor, demonstrating a coercive power in the relationship and suggesting that the US did not possess command over the IDF, as claimed by Kali. Had this been the case, a ceasefire perhaps would have been signed, preventing the war in the first place. Indeed, although the US theoretically possessed significant means to restrain Israel, it never used any of them precisely because of the Zionist Para-State, which had overridden other strategic concerns. Interestingly, read in this light, Kali’s conclusion about US military aid to Israel is evidence for the Para-State thesis, not against it:

Understanding the incentive structures at play here should help to explain why there is basically no support for cutting U$ aid to i$rael at the highest levels of government. To do so would mean not only going against i$rael and facing the wrath of the Zionist lobby but cutting billions from the balance sheets of defense contractors, angering the military industrial complex, and weakening the position of the U$ both domestically and internationally. The reason the i$rael lobby gets its way is because its desires happen to align with the desires of the broader establishment. There is a triple coincidence of wants.

Kali correctly describes the Para-State’s internal dynamics now that it is in firm control, but he does not adequately disprove its existence with this argument. This flaw persists in much of his analysis.

In a mirrored form, this flaw appears in Kali’s analysis of the role of Israeli intelligence for the US. They write:

Most critically, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, i$sraeli agencies gathered crucial information about the USSR’s nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, which was then communicated to the U$. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Global War on Terror, the role of i$raeli intelligence became more focused on occurrences in the Middle East, but it lost none of its importance to the hegemonic power of the U$.

This correctly identifies and discusses the internal dynamics of US-Israeli intelligence relations, but Kali’s example directly undermines his case. It shows that Israel’s dominant role in the “Special Relationship” is not necessary to fulfill this intelligence function. He provides a major historical period (the Cold War) when Israel performed this function without exercising anywhere near as much influence over US policy as it does today or as it has in the past thirty years. Aman and Mossad’s utility to the US is ultimately independent of the Para-State, but it played an integral part in the Para-State’s formation and continued hegemony.

Kali’s analysis of Israeli economic viability is sharp but again misses the big picture. They note that in the current global arrangement, Israel is economically independent:

While providing military aid and political backing, the U$ has not had to send any sort of substantial economic aid to i$rael in years. The Zionist entity is economically self-sustaining, even if its position as an expansionist settler colony means it is always in need of military and political support. This unique mix of dependence and self-sufficiency makes i$rael an ideal ally for a global superpower like the U$. On the one hand, their military-political dependency will keep them in line, making sure that they fit themselves into your broader strategic interests and goals. On the other, their self-sufficiency means that they are able to take on much of the responsibilities involved in executing and maintaining those plans.

This is a key element in the US-Israeli relationship, and I am glad that Kali has highlighted it because it explains the “division in labor” of the Zionist project and broader Western imperialism. However, he fails to explain how or why Israel is “kept in line.” As discussed above, Israel was not “fitting itself” to suit American strategic interests in the Levant, but the other way around, so the question remains: Who draws the lines? Kali is right to draw attention to the relatively self-sustaining nature of the Israeli economy, but this is due to Israeli integration with Western capital markets, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s. Israeli analysts are the first to admit that the Israeli economy is highly dependent on this integration. In turn, this is inextricably linked with the co-mingling and intermarriage of American and Israeli elites, meaning that key sections of the American (and Western) bourgeoisie are themselves the Israeli bourgeoisie. In other words, there are no lines that restrict Israeli action because they have achieved a position where they could draw the lines in question. This was a highly conscious project by Israel and its cadres abroad during the height of neoliberalism.^[24] One extremely potent result of this project is the “Palestine Laboratory,” which Kali emphasizes is a critical Israeli service to the US. On this point, I fully agree–the formation of even a US-compliant Palestinian state would remove this utility.

Independent of, but closely linked to this project, is the fact that Israel has its own dedicated manpower for Zionist wars of aggression. As Kali notes, this displaces the direct strain of dead and wounded troops from broader American society to Zionist society. However, he misses the indirect strain on American society. While Americans writ large may not care about Israeli troops, American (and other Western) Jews certainly do, and it is their voices that matter to the political establishment. Indeed, Western politicians broadly view Israeli troops as their own in no small part because they are dual-nationals.^[25] As a result, they expend the same amount of resources as they would on their actual troops, with the expectation that the public simply comply. Indeed, the level of social endorsement demanded by Zionism is much higher than domestic militarism–one can burn an American flag, but not an Israeli flag. This has led to negative polarization across the rest of society. Contrast public disgust today with any point during the peak of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) when US troops were dying at a much higher pace than the IDF is now. The fervent agitation and organizing of Zionist Jews–and the Zionist Para-State as a whole–has independently created the social unrest that the displacement of social costs was intended to avoid. Zionist hysteria has led to popular displeasure anyway.

Great Power Conflict

Kali is amongst the few left-wing observers to adequately highlight the role of great power conflict with China in this crisis.^[26] The absence of this subject was the biggest weakness of my original argument, and I hope to amend this while responding to Kali’s particular analysis of the US-China rivalry. He centers his analysis on the recent war with Iran:

Today, in the era of great power competition with China, i$rael continues to serve as a key player in the amerikkkan strategy to maintain dominance. One of the motivations for U$ involvement in the Twelve-Day War between i$rael and Iran this year was the possibility of a strategic advantage over China.

The bulk of the section accurately and comprehensively reproduces the Atlanticist logic behind aggression against Iran, but Kali does not question the logic itself, taking it as rational by default. This is a major error, as indicated by this claim:

While it must be admitted that the alliance is not all that strong to begin with, it is clear that Iran has closer ties to China than to the U$, and Iran would undoubtedly ally itself with China in the context of a world war sparked by conflict between the two superpowers. It is in the amerikkkan interest to try to pull the two apart, and the war provided them with the perfect opportunity. [Emphasis mine]

That Iran would “undoubtedly” side with China in the event of world war must be substantiated. It presumes that Iranian leadership has the ability and will to decisively ally with one or another political bloc. There is no evidence of this in Iranian history since the death of Khomeini. Indeed, fence-sitting and flip-flopping are the hallmarks of the Islamic Republic, as best seen by the (supposedly anti-Western) Ebrahim Raisi government’s continued attempts to resume nuclear negotiations after the US had nullified the JCPOA and assassinated Qassem Soleimani. This is part of a much broader historical pattern of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to reconcile with the West. The 2003 “Grand Bargain” is one particularly infamous case.^[27] Over the past thirty years, Iranian leadership has shown that it views normalization with the West as vitally necessary, but is unable to choose a strategy on how best to achieve this.^[28] It has constantly vacillated between achieving normalization by siding with the West (the Reformists) and by securing it through force (the Principlists). In both cases, the West is the final aim, which makes Kali’s claim highly questionable.

The months preceding the Twelve-Day War are highly illustrative, and Kali’s omission of them is notable. He asserts that the War was the “perfect opportunity” to split Iran from China. This is false because Iranian leadership had repeatedly signaled its desire to align with the West with the mere act of negotiations, let alone the proposed terms. It was difficult to miss the implication of the anti-Zionist Islamic Republic asking for normalization with the US while the Gaza Genocide entered its worst stages. Indeed, the Iranian position conceded to key American interests–Antony Blinken revealed that Iran was even willing to give up the ballistic missiles program, alongside agreeing to 1% enrichment. He complained that the Israeli strikes sabotaged this deal. That is to say, the US had a clear opportunity to peacefully split Iran from China, avoiding the costs entailed by a lengthy regime-change war. Recent reporting has revealed that even these negotiations–which highly favored the US–were a ruse for joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.^[29] That is to say, the US gave up a chance to politically align Iran with the West in favor of a war that guaranteed the current crisis. There are even signs that the Twelve-Day War forced Iran to meaningfully align with China, which the attack was ostensibly supposed to stop in the first place.^[30]

While the US could be satisfied with “JCPOA 2.0,” Israel could never tolerate the deal because of its longstanding hostility to the Islamic Republic. This hostility is rooted in the awareness that Iran’s anti-Zionist foreign policy (however weak) is a historical aberration. The elimination of the Islamic Republic would permit the installation of a pro-Zionist regime like that of the Shah. Even an enthusiastically US-compliant government in Iran, such as Hassan Rouhani’s, would not assuage Zionist paranoia. The Israeli position is inherently more maximalist and radical than the American position. It was apparent during the Twelve-Day War that Israel and the US were not entirely aligned, hence the disjointed strategy. However, by prosecuting this war, Israel set in motion a process whereby the Trump administration would independently reach the same conclusion as the Israeli government. In this way, any confusion between the two would be cleared, leading to greater strategic alignment and operational integration during the next war on Iran.

Furthermore, while Atlanticists like Michael Flynn view such a war as essential in the strategy against China, the Twelve-Day War (and the broader regional crisis) has revealed that the US is physically not equipped to handle war with great powers (or even middling powers as shown by the ongoing war with Iran). After the initial Zionist salvo, Iranian leadership regained their composure and commenced missile strikes on Israel, requiring new anti-air shipments from the US and the redeployment of the highly-coveted THAAD system. With each passing day, Iranian missiles increasingly penetrated Israeli airspace, landing highly significant strikes on the Haifa oil refinery, IDF bases, and residential complexes. Israel and the US soon realized that Israel could not sustain a prolonged war of attrition with Iran, hence the rush for a ceasefire. The weaknesses of the THAAD and Israeli defenses became readily apparent despite the severity of air strikes on Iran. In other words, even when under considerable pressure, Iran was able to circumvent the best American anti-air systems and inflict significant damage on Israel. Since the ceasefire, there have been many reports revealing that Israel used more THAAD systems than are produced in a year. Replenishing the expended munitions would require over a year’s worth of production. These systems would be essential during any war with China, yet they are being wasted on a war initiated by Israel.^[31] The longer the US waits to fight China, the stronger China becomes. Time is not on the side of the US, yet it continues to expend highly-needed resources in Middle Eastern conflicts. This irrational strategy is due to the Zionist Para-State. It is no surprise that a prominent GWOT-era general like Michael Flynn is an enthusiastic proponent of this path, rather than directly confronting the PRC.

Contradictions and Crisis

In the penultimate section of Kali’s piece, he raises a key point on sunk costs:

First, allow me to discuss what I will call, for the sake of shorthand, “the contradictions of inertia.” The modern amerikkkan decision to support i$rael is not made in a vacuum. It always exists in the context of the two entities’ prior history. Once the relationship has been established and the dynamics are in place, it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle. The costs of separation rise to such heights that they make a divorce practically impossible. [Emphasis mine]

I entirely agree. This is precisely what I sought to explain when analyzing the transformation of the Zionist Aircraft Carrier into the Zionist Para-State. The latter represents the hardening of the inertia described by Kali. The choices taken today by the West are a direct result of the Para-State’s ascendance because the Para-State foreclosed other options. This brings me back to the core problem in Kali’s piece. He explains the inner workings of this inertia and why it continues to reproduce itself, but not its long-term effects. He writes further below:

The deeper amerikkka embeds itself into the Zionist entity, the larger the damage that will be done to the U$ if Zionism faces its ultimate defeat. So every time i$rael is threatened, amerikkka must step in to protect its interests, and it must do so by investing even more. This is what I am calling a contradiction of inertia. The more the U$ invests, the greater their vulnerability, and the greater their vulnerability, the more they must invest. Eventually, from the amerikkkan perspective, the Zionist project becomes too big to fail. [Emphasis mine]

Kali describes but does not name the essence of the problem: crisis, or in Wallerstein’s words, “a failure of the system because of the operation of the system itself.” The Zionist Para-State has become the Western establishment, and this is precisely what has made the current crisis so existentially threatening. The problems of a fascist settler-colonial project in the Levant are somehow the problems of the entire West. Through the natural progression of the US’s and West’s relationship with Israel, which began on rational imperialist grounds, Zionism has successfully overridden all other Western concerns. In this respect, it is akin to how capitalism, particularly Western imperialism, is incapable of breaking from fossil fuels despite the planetary environmental threat posed by them. The short-term has consumed the long-term.

This dispute ultimately goes deeper than interest or non-interest. It is over whether or not the capitalist system is capable of being irrational. Kali contends it cannot, so he argues that there are many rational reasons why the US supports Zionism. I contend that capitalism can be irrational, and the formation and hegemony of the Zionist Para-State is my prime evidence. It has brought the entire West into a severe political crisis due to an entirely irrational and parochial (not to mention disgusting) drive to physically exterminate a completely defenseless population. It does so despite the West’s key strategic interests, most urgent and important of which is the need to prepare for and initiate a great power conflict against its rising competitor, China. The system’s own functioning has led it to significantly buckle and perhaps break in the near future. Recognizing this irrationality–indeed, irrationalism as a whole–is essential to any strategy of fighting Western imperialism.^[32]

Kali de Armas wrote another reply after this. I didn’t respond because I thought it was drivel, but the reader is free to make their own judgment. Perhaps destroying the global economy really is in the interest of American imperialism.

1. Arghiri Emmanuel was the first Marxist thinker to point this out in his essay “White Settler-Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism,” cited further below.

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2. As Noel Ignatiev put it: “The United States of America was the world’s first Zionist state: that is, it is the first place settled by people who arrived with the certainty that God had promised them the land and authorized them to dispossess the indigenous population.” From: Ignatiev, “Introduction,” Race Traitor no. 16 (Winter 2005). See also: Francis Jennings, Invasion of America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2010).

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3. Andrew England, Simeon Kerr, “Gulf states could review overseas investments to ease financial strains caused by Iran war,” Financial Times, 5 March, 2026.

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4. I owe this point to og_hoopoe on Twitter.

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5. An anonymous Iranian official recently told Financial Times, “We had no choice but to escalate and start a big fire so everyone would see.” Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Andrew England, “Iran executes Khamenei’s plan to spread regional war,” Financial Times, 2 March 2026.

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6. For the most concise versions of both theories, see: Davide Mastracci, Tara Alami, Liam Meisner, “Is the Lobby the Main Reason for Western Support of Israel?,” The Maple, 11 July, 2024. https://www.readthemaple.com/is-the-lobby-the-main-reason-for-support-of-israel/

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7. To be exact, Haig said: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.” Quoted in: Michael Oren, "The Ultimate Ally," Foreign Policy, 25 April 2011.

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8. Some would contend that such “soft power” is ultimately unnecessary for an imperial power. This contention means discarding any notion of Gramscian hegemony and ideological consent. The very nature of a global hegemon is that it is able to gain the consent of weaker powers and populations for its own aims. As Gian Giacomo Migone put it so well: “Empire always has an idealized projection of its will to power. It is indeed one of the signs of a power on the rise, when an imperial project has the capacity to build wide consent for those very objectives that increase its own direct power.” Migone, United States and Fascist Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press 2015), 14

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9. Arghiri Emmanuel, “White Settler-Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism,” New Left Review I/73 (May-June 1972).

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10. Cf. Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America (Boston: South End Press 1987).

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11. I owe this line of thought to Patrick Wolfe’s book Traces of History.

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12. I put “diaspora” in quotes because the term suggests that Israel is the true homeland of Jews.

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13. I owe this idea to Josh Messite.

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14. I owe this argument to Nathan Tankus. While reading an earlier draft of this piece, my friend og_hoopoe on Twitter insightfully commented: “The outlook is originally Western–it is inherent to always animating settler colonialism, but because settler colonialism ceased to be an animating force within the politics of the mainstream West, it was Israel alone who held closely onto that small flame and kept the fire alive, ready to present back to the West which had almost forgotten it. But when it did so, it imparted its own image, its own articulation, of that ideology–the fire was kept alive after all, almost purely on the bodies of dead Muslims and Arabs. So it was imprinted with that worldview and idiom, of terrorists and the logic of combat against that class of non-human. All this is to say, I think Israel just spearheaded its rediscovery in the West rather than originated it.”

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15. The parapolitical dimension will not be addressed here.

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16. For similar reasons, Israel agitated against Ba’athist Iraq, but the specifically Zionist factor behind the 2003 invasion was minor. The West had a “true” geopolitical interest in destroying Ba’athist Iraq because it needed to break OPEC’s political independence in order to expand oil production and reduce oil prices, thus stabilizing Western imperialism. Israeli support for the Iraq War was ultimately secondary to the war’s initiation and prosecution.

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17. The liberal journalist Nicholas Kristoff bemoaned the Bush administration’s rejection of Iran’s “Grand Bargain” on precisely these grounds. Cf. Kristoff, “Iran’s Proposal for a ‘Grand Bargain’,” New York Times, 28 April, 2007. https://archive.nytimes.com/kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/irans-proposal-for-a-grand-bargain/

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18. Cf. HJ & RE Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950 (Harmondsworth: Pelican 1969); Brian Bunting, Rise of the South African Reich (Harmondsworth: Pelican 1969).

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19. I owe this argument and formulation to amal_shura on Twitter: https://x.com/amal_shura/status/1940518655324049680?t=E5Si8Fhm9JZYpIjULPrfXw&s=19

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20. I owe this argument and formulation to SurusBarca on Twitter: https://x.com/SurusBarca/status/1940494586281185544?t=84FmBcdVlf43lqBOK-w16w&s=19

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21. A middle-ranking analyst from the Biden State Department later informed me that these reports accurately reflected the attitude in much of the government–but not the highest ranks, which coincidentally most embodied the Zionist Para-State. Antony Blinken and Amos Hochstein are two cases in point.

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22. Seth G. Jones, Daniel Byman, Alexander Palmer, Riley McCabe, “The Coming Conflict with Hezbollah,” CSIS, 21 March 2024. https://www.csis.org/analysis/coming-conflict-hezbollah

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23. Harrison Morgan, “Hezbollah’s Defeat and Hamas’s Dogged Resistance: Israel’s Two-Front War and the Perils of Prewar Assumptions,” MWI, 27 February, 2025. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/hezbollahs-defeat-and-hamass-dogged-resistance-israels-two-front-war-and-the-perils-of-prewar-assumptions/

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24. Cf. Jonathan Nitzan, Shimshon Bichler, Global Political Economy of Israel (London: Pluto Press 2002)

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25. This comes up in one of Kali’s footnotes: “It’s also a lot like asking why the amerikkkan settlers felt so much more loyalty to europe than to the Indigenous nations of the continent they were occupying. Interestingly, Rob observes the deep interpenetration of amerikkkan and i$raeli elites in his article, but this causes him to come to the conclusion that a “Zionist Para-State” is orchestrating an infiltration of the amerikkkan elite. He misses the fact that what has actually happened is that a group of europeans and amerikkkans have infiltrated Palestine.” This observation is trivial, and it immediately raises another question: Why has this particular set of Europeans and Americans seized control of the Western establishment for their project, while other Europeans and Americans (e.g., right-wing Arabists in the 20th century) have not? The latter are just as much the “West” as Zionists, yet their goals are ignored. This is what I sought to answer.

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26. Another notable case is Leng Weibing: https://waronchina.substack.com/p/whats-a-little-mass-murder-between ; https://waronchina.substack.com/p/whats-a-little-mass-murder-between-78e

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27. Cf. Kristoff, “Iran’s Proposal”

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28. I will cover this history at length in another piece. As of 3 March 2026, it seems that the IRI has finally abandoned this goal, which has freed it to pursue radical defensive action.

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29. Lazar Berman, “How an Israeli-American deception campaign lulled Iran into a false sense of security,” Times of Israel, 13 June 2025. https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-an-israeli-american-deception-campaign-lulled-iran-into-a-false-sense-of-security/

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30. Cf. Sina Toosi, “Iran’s Foreign Policy Is Changing in Real Time,” Foreign Policy, 11 September, 2025. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/11/irans-foreign-policy-is-changing-in-real-time/

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31. This is doubly the case with the ongoing war with Iran. See: Abigail Hauslohner, Steff Chavez, Lauren Fedor, James Politi, “US has burned through ‘years’ of munitions since start of Iran war,” Financial Times, 12 March 2026.

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32. Cf. Georg Lukacs, Destruction of Reason (London: Merlin Press 1981)

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