NATO’s goals can seem abstract when the sympathy and anguish of the world’s people are focused on the systematic destruction in Gaza. It is the most unequal struggle imaginable. Yet the Palestinian resistance is so powerful that Zionist planners and generals admit that they have failed to break this indomitable liberation struggle, even after nine months. Palestine solidarity is a global phenomenon.
With [Zionism’s] foreign minister an invited attendee at the NATO Summit, while publicly carrying out these repeated and utterly criminal attacks on defenseless civilians, the people of the world can only assume one thing: The intended NATO message is that war without limit is the new norm.
NATO seeks to normalize relentless war on civilian populations. It is a desperate effort to maintain its deteriorating world position through sheer terror. Such acts will fuel far greater resistance in West Asia and worldwide.
Are Zionists neocolonists? Neocolonialism is marked by the use of compradores and the disuse of settlers from the mother country, as I understand that’s basically the entirety of what separates it from colonialism that came before. Zionists are just settler-colonists.
The US has a lot of leverage, but I think Israel is an equal partner in their relationship. They rely on each other rather than Israel just being a client of the US. Also, should we call Australia or New Zealand neocolonies? Their relationship is basically the same.
The US can survive without Isn’treal, but I don’t think the reverse is true. They need our UNSC veto, military/intelligence support, and yearly billions in aid.
The US can’t survive without superprofits and the Zionist entity is a crucial component for their extraction and distribution.
It’s how the world’s oil supply is secured for Western interests, trade through the Red Sea is secured for Western interests (which makes the attacks in the Red Sea an extremely powerful tool!), and the movement of people from Africa into Asia and eventually Europe is heavily restricted to maximize the availability of superexploitable labor in Africa for Western interests.
Israel is so critical to the US, and the West as a whole, that I really don’t think it could survive without it. “Were there not for Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.” This puts them into a strong position and makes them into an equal partner, because if Israel falls the West will fall soon after. Inshallah
It would suddenly find itself paying through the nose for oil; unable to control commerce through the Red Sea and thus crippling its ability to extract resources from East Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia; unable to control the movement of people out of the underdeveloped African regions necessary for extracting superprofit; without Israel, the whole imperial project implodes.
I don’t think Israel could survive without the US, but I don’t think the US could survive long without Israel either.
The West Bank has many of those features
The West Bank has compradores, yes, but it also has settlers and that’s distinct from neocolonialism.
Hence, settler-colonialism.
It has features of both, really. It doesn’t have to fit into just one form of oppression and exploitation.
The theory about neocolonialism was created to explain the hands-off approach the colonial powers were taking to the world. They weren’t settling the world anymore, they were just setting up local colonial managers to control their holdings from afar with no intention of actually annexing the territory. It was distinct from settler-colonialism, that was the entire point.
This isn’t distinct from settler-colonialism.
I agree completely that it’s distinct from settler-colonialism and that the development of theory on neocolonialism was in recognition of the less explicit but often more sinister forms of control that “decolonized” countries were thrown into. As a nitpick, neo-colonialism wasn’t meant to just distinguish from settler-colonialism but also the non-settler forms.
But I do think the term has been used, including by Nkrumah, to describe states that also had settler-colonialism. There were/are states retaining settler-colonial character while also being subjected to imperialism by the US-dominated financial system that dictates policies, for example. Nkrumah described basically every African settler-colonial (and even apartheid!) country in these kinds of terms in Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.
So in a way both stipulations are true. Neo-colonialism is distinguished from settler and non settler colonialism and that’s 100% the point of it. But a state (or non-state) can have both characters. I would disagree that one excludes the other by definition, particularly if one analyzes a country’s relationship with multiple states / projects.
I think my real contention is that Israel is hardly subjected to US imperialism. It’s an equal partner in their relationship, as such, Israel is not a US colony. Israel is a settler-colony that has no mother country. It relies on the US, for sure, but their relationship is codependent and they rely on each other. Portraying Israel as just a US vassal is wrong.
I wouldn’t call Israel an equal partner, it is just very useful for US interests and has developed how to exploit its position. Economically, I would put it somewhere in between subimperialist and a secondary imperialist power in its own right when it comes to global geopolitics overall, in between something like South Korea and something like Denmark. Its own working class is exploited relative to its national bourgeoisie, it eats from the Imperialist trough, but it does not have anything like true independence, it is subordinate to the seat of international capital and is highly dependent on it militarily and economically. With regards to Palestine, it is a settler-colonial project that uses an array of means of control, including those of neocolonialism - and so does the US (towards both Palestine and Israel but far more towards the former). With regards to its other neighbors, it acts as a destabilizing force for all anti-imperialist projects, nearly always with heavy American support (and often direction). It is very similar to apartheid South Africa in all of these respects, though it is more industrialized.
One way to think of it is through the legacy of the deconstruction of the Ottoman Empire, with the British sponsoring the Zionist project there and then handing over to the new global seat of capital mid-century. The British Empire treated Palestine as a quasi-colony almost immediately, helped set up the anti-Palestinian policies Zionists clamored for, and aided the Zionist project militarily. This lasted even until the “decolonial” period where neocolonialism replaced explicit colonialism as part of American-led capitalism, of a unipolar capitalist order. Palestine was subjected to both the settler-colonialism of Zionists from this period forward and also the mechanisms of neocolonialism. Palestine outside Israel was left to the economic order of Imperialized countries. Low industrialization, cheap exports, the creation of food aid dependency, the constant bombardment of comprador campaigns, etc.
Israel will get tossed aside the moment the US no longer sees an interest in maintaining it and if it hadn’t already collapsed by that point, it would shortly after. In contrast, if Israel cut ties or imploded, the US would chug along looking for myriad angles to continue propping itself up. It would perceive a crisis and pivot rather than immediately collapse. Of course, these fates aren’t independent - a weak US will also mean a weak Israel and the US is unlikely to stop seeing an interest in maintaining Israel until it is in its own crisis.
