In times of horrific violence and illegal warfare—especially the kind we’re seeing now with the U.S. officially entering the war against Iran—it’s understandable that people search for explanations. They want to know why the bombs keep falling, why ceasefires are sabotaged, and why the most powerful country in the world enables it all. In that search, many people land on a seductive but deeply dangerous answer: “Israel controls the United States.”
Let’s be unequivocal: This claim is not just false, it’s rooted in centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories, and it distorts our understanding of how imperialism, capitalism, and U.S. foreign policy actually function.
The United States is the most powerful country in the world. Its military budget dwarfs that of any other nation by many times. Its corporations dominate global finance and media. It maintains hundreds of military bases around the planet, and wields veto power in the United Nations Security Council. It can unilaterally impose economic ruin on entire nations through sanctions—as it has done to Iran.
To suggest that such a country is being “controlled” by a far smaller state like Israel isn’t just illogical, it’s a deflection from the real drivers of the global cycle of never-ending war.
The U.S. supports Israel not because it’s under Israel’s control, but because doing so serves U.S. imperial interests in the Middle East. The region holds immense strategic value, primarily for its oil and natural gas reserves, as well as key maritime trade routes.
Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has relied on a network of client states—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and most crucially, Israel—to maintain hegemony over this vital region. Israel plays the role of the “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” to borrow a term once used by U.S. generals, and serves as a permanent military outpost that also happens to be a settler-colonial project.
In other words, Israel is a tool of imperialism, not its master.
Blaming a foreign state for U.S. war crimes abroad has always been a convenient dodge, especially when the real culprit is much closer to home. U.S. support for Israel is not some anomaly driven by ethnic or religious loyalty. It’s driven by the logic of capitalism.
The military-industrial complex, Wall Street investors, and fossil fuel giants benefit handsomely from a permanent state of instability in the region. Israel is one of the top importers of U.S. weapons and one of its top military R&D partners. The aid that the U.S. sends to Israel? Much of it is recycled back into the coffers of U.S. weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. The wars are profitable; the devastation is good for business.
Framing Israel as the puppeteer obscures this reality. It reduces a material system of profit and domination into a shadowy cabal, and history shows us where that road leads.
The myth of Jewish control is as old as European antisemitism itself. In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of controlling finance, poisoning wells, and manipulating monarchs. In the 20th century, Hitler’s Nazi Party rose to power on claims that Jews secretly dominated governments, banks, and media. The infamous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion became a bestseller. And during the Cold War, both the far-right and sectors of the left sometimes trafficked in conspiracy theories about secretive “Zionist influence” over the West.
Today, when people say that “Israel controls the U.S.,” they are echoing that same logic. It often goes hand in hand with accusations of “dual loyalty,” a trope used to slander generations of Jewish people as somehow alien or disloyal to the countries they live in.
Let’s be clear: Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic. Opposing Zionism, rejecting apartheid, and standing against genocide are all ethical and political imperatives. But blaming a cabal of Israeli agents for U.S. imperial policy is not analysis; it’s conspiracy theory. And it plays directly into the hands of white nationalists who would love nothing more than to scapegoat Jews for the crimes and chaos of capitalism.
The truth is that every U.S. president in recent history—from LBJ to Trump—has supported Israel because it aligns with U.S. strategy in the Middle East. When Israel slaughters civilians in Gaza, launches criminal wars against Iran, when it annexes land, when it violates international law, the U.S. response is to issue mild criticism at most, give protection in the U.N., followed by another round of weapons shipments.
Does the Israel lobby exist? Sure. So do the Saudi lobby, the oil lobby, the NRA, Big Pharma, and AIPAC’s liberal rival, J Street. But none of these groups control the U.S. government. None of these groups made Trump bomb Iran. They are part of the machinery through which corporate interests and imperial objectives are negotiated and maintained.
Suggesting that Israel alone has managed to capture the entire U.S. political system, forcing it to go to war with Iran, ignores the far more frightening truth: the U.S. political system was built to serve capital, and the government of Israel serves that purpose well.
Anti-imperialists, peace activists, and progressives all have a responsibility to fight imperialism and resist the U.S.-supported crimes being committed by Israel. When we look at the war against Iran, when we see the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we must resist the temptation to frame it as an aberration caused by foreign influence. It is not. It is the predictable result of imperialism, which uses violence to maintain control, extract wealth, and suppress resistance.
This is not a question of Israel controlling the U.S. or the U.S. controlling Israel. It is about capitalism’s never-ending thirst for resources, the U.S. ruling class’s desire to maintain its imperialist hegemony, and its use of violence to maintain its position. It is about a shared structure of racialized violence, militarism, and dispossession.
Iranians aren’t being bombed by U.S.-made military equipment because the U.S. is being manipulated, nor are those weapons being used to slaughter Gazans because Jews control the U.S. government. They are suffering because U.S.-led imperialism and the capitalist system is doing what it has always done, since long before Israel existed: using war and violence to enrich corporations and billionaires.
Until we dismantle the capitalist system that links Tel Aviv to Washington, Raytheon to the rubble of Tehran and Khan Yunis, we will only be treating the symptoms rather than the disease.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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