That’s what I wrote in 2014, upon hearing a prominent Jewish leader call on the White House to support whatever decisions Israeli leaders make.
My concern couldn’t have been more justified.
For decades, Jewish groups worldwide sacrificed their Jewish identity for a pro-Israel one. That’s the trap we’re in now.
For all the noise groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, ELNET, and the American Jewish Committee (both the US branch and AJC-Europe) make about representing their own countries, they function to promote Israeli interests.
There is nothing wrong with that. Especially in major international hubs like Washington or Brussels, many countries have organisations that mobilise both their own emissaries and their expatriate or diaspora ethnic communities to advocate for their interests.
But there is a risk involved, especially for Jews. The idea of dual loyalty is a widespread Antisemitic trope, and unfortunately, pro-Israel organisations have not only ignored that threat but have also deliberately worsened it.
The false claim that they are not advocating for a foreign country—an argument that AIPAC, for example, makes every day—when they are so plainly doing so, reinforces the idea that they are being duplicitous. Because they are.
The widespread tendency among these major pro-Israel groups to equate Israel and Zionism with Jews as a people is an understandable, if regrettable, strategic decision.
Through this conflation, they can weaponise both genuine Antisemitism and false accusations of it to support Israel and to demonise its critics.
This makes discussions of pro-Israel policies a near-impossible minefield that few want to navigate. However, it also triggers an “Antisemitism time bomb”, which echoes my 2014 warning.
Setting the Stage for Jewish Hate
Concern over that outcome is why some progressive activists—and not only Jews—are worried about the resignation of Joseph Kent from the US government.
Kent was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, appointed by Donald Trump. He is also a major conspiracy theorist and has documented connections to extreme white nationalists.
While the source may be dubious, the substance of Kent’s resignation letter is, in various parts, both welcome and alarming.
In that letter, he claims that Trump was “misled” by a vast misinformation campaign concocted by Israel and the American media, working in concert.
Kent also claims that Israel “dragged” the United States into the Iraq war more than twenty years ago and, somehow, contrives to blame the 2019 death of his wife in Syria during the campaign against ISIL on Israel as well.
The letter is significant, as it is the first example we have of a significant official in the Trump administration quitting over the war with Iran. It’s as important as what we saw during the Biden years when officials quit over American support for the genocide in Gaza.
Regardless of Kent’s ideology and even his problematic reasoning, this action represents a key moment of opposition to the illegal and unjustified war on Iran.
That’s most welcome. But his explanation is very troubling.
Clearly, no liberal or progressive, much less an outspoken leftist, could be in a position to resign from the Trump Administration over a matter of principle. And, regardless of what I think of Kent, there is no reason to doubt that this was a matter of principle for him.
But his reasoning cannot be accepted without question. It cannot be casually taken for granted that Trump is, as one journalist described Kent’s assertions, “an empty vessel, a person with no beliefs or agency other than what the Israelis and their allies implant there”.
Joseph Kent portrays not only Donald Trump but the entire United States as merely victims of Israeli deception, as if Trump and other American leaders had not independently chosen to adopt a hostile stance against Iran, not just now but for decades.
It would be unreasonable to suggest that Israel was not a major factor in the American decision to initiate this war of choice.
However, we must move away from the conspiratorial thinking that fuels the idea that Israel somehow manipulates or even forces the United States into such a war.
Iraq vs. Iran
In 2006, I debated Stephen Walt about what was, at that time, his and John Mearsheimer’s article about the Israel Lobby.
I argued that the neoconservatives, whom we all agreed were the driving force behind the war, laid out a clear plan through the Project for a New American Century and that, while Israel was obviously a key component and the neocons certainly had Israeli interests in mind, this was a fundamentally American strategy and approach.
Indeed, despite the arguments made at the time by Netanyahu (who was not then in office), Iraq was not a significant threat to Israel, much less the United States, in 2003.
The Iraq war was the central action in the ill-conceived and bloody “Global War on Terror.”
It was part of an American strategy to combat terrorism by any means that didn’t involve ending the exploitative practices and support for brutal autocracies that spawned anti-American terrorism in the first place.
Iran is a different matter.
There were very good reasons why every American president from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden refused to be baited into an attack on Iran, and they all came down to American interests.
None of this has changed.
What did change is that the United States now has a president who is not only corrupt and narcissistic but who refuses to sit still for daily briefings to try to break through his almost inconceivable ignorance of world affairs.
Donald Trump is a man with preconceived notions about an entire range of things, and if one of his advisers tries to present facts that dispute those notions, that aide will be rebuked or, quite possibly, dismissed.
Trump listens to few people. Unfortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu is one of them. He also listens to those who line his pockets, like Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson, for whom destroying Iran is surely a major priority.
Netanyahu has visited the White House an unprecedented six times since Trump’s return to power. Along with hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Bibi helped to convince Trump that it was in his interest to attack Iran.
The right-wing news sphere that Trump surrounds himself with, as well as the more mainstream media, were all sceptical of the idea of war before the attacks started. There was no campaign or conspiracy here, and the anti-Iran propaganda was no different than it has been for decades. There was just a gullible president with authoritarian aspirations, vulnerable to a master manipulator like Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kent’s letter invents elaborate conspiracies, as many others in the world of right-wing politics do, to explain why a president he admired and respected launched a war of choice that, even in the best-case scenario, is going to harm American interests in the Middle East and across the globe.
To do so, he relied on the Antisemitic thinking so familiar to him and his white nationalist compatriots.
That doesn’t diminish the significance of the resignation itself. It’s crucial to argue that this war runs counter to everyone’s interests. In fact, I would contend it will be harmful even to the people of Israel, although I accept it benefits Netanyahu and his far-right government.
But we are already seeing the legitimate hostility toward Israel over its genocide and warmongering actions taking ugly turns into Antisemitism, with attacks on Jewish sites in both North America and Europe.
Such attacks are going to spread.
Ideas like Kent’s are adding fuel to that fire, and so far, most of the counter-arguments are being made by people who will also use Kent to justify support for Israel’s actions and policies.
That must change. There needs to be a voice loudly affirming that Kent’s views on Jewish control are not only Antisemitic but entirely false, while still asserting that he is correct about this war being one that serves no American interest.
Two truths can be held at once.
This war only serves the interests of Bibi’s far-right government, and Donald Trump decided to support it out of his own mistaken view that he would benefit from it.
Trump did not act out of fear of an “Israel lobby.” He wasn’t forced into this, except by his own crass stupidity.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
