This is an English translation of an essay provided in Spanish to [Materialismos: Cuadernos de Marxismo y Psicoanálisis] (https://materialismo.hypotheses.org/actual) for a special issue on Palestine.
A number of notable parallels run through the histories of Israel and the United States. Both are settler-colonial states founded on the genocide of Indigenous peoples on the part of Western Europeans. Both, moreover, have sought to significantly expand their borders vía military conquest, and to dominate their neighbors. Internally, both economies are marked by some of the highest levels of polarization among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, rendering per-capita metrics largely inaccurate. Both societies are also extremely militaristic and continue to be riven by institutionalized and systemic racism, while claiming to champion human rights and democracy. Undergirding these internal fractures is a sophisticated system of propaganda and indoctrination, including educational institutions and the commercial news media, to which the peoples of both countries are subjected. These similarities are important factors when accounting for the historical relationship between the two states, although their differences are of equal, if not greater, significance.
Chief among these differences is the very distinct positions the two states occupy in the capitalist world system. The United States is widely recognized as the world’s primary imperial power, whereas Israel is more of a client than a partner of the United States. Despite representing a potent military force within the Southwest Asia-North Africa region (SWANA)—more widely known by its European colonial label of the “Middle East”—Israel remains extremely dependent on its sponsor for military, economic, and political support. This combination of comparative military strength and objective dependency makes Israel a highly effective tool of U.S. imperialism.
Israel’s importance in this respect is closely tied to the strategic importance of SWANA more broadly, which is difficult to overstate. As the meeting point between the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, SWANA represents a vital hub of worldwide transportation and trade. According to the [International Monetary Fund] (https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/03/07/Red-Sea-Attacks-Disrupt-Global-Trade), roughly 15 percent of global maritime trade passes through the Suez Canal alone, which is only one of several vital transportation nodes the region hosts, the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait being widely regarded as the other two most essential passages. Moreover, the United States recently began pursuing a large infrastructure project to establish a [trade corridor] (https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/middleeast/us-india-gulf-europe-corridor-mime-intl) that passes from India through the Persian Gulf and then Israel in a move to counter what it perceives as the threat posed by China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In addition to container shipping and other trade, vast proportions of the world’s petroleum and natural gas are moved through these corridors, as many of these resources originate in the region.
SWANA’s vast reserves of petroleum, of course, are widely recognized as the primary factor underlying the region’s strategic importance. In 2012, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Secretary General Abdalla S. El-Badri [reported] (https://www.opec.org/speech-detail/228-30-january-2012.html) that the eight OPEC member countries in ASWAN (Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) hold roughly 58 percent and 43 percent of the world’s proven crude oil and natural gas reserves respectively. While access to the region’s oil wealth is of immediate importance to those nations dependent on it—specifically, Western Europe and Japan—control over this wealth carries with it both significant economic (in the form of massive profits for energy corporations with preferential access to exploit these resources) and geopolitical (a de facto lever of influence, if not control, over countries dependent on these resources) benefits. Thus, while the United States does not rely on SWANA to satisfy its own demand for petroleum, it nonetheless regards control over this region as a key strategic objective.
This is because, as its own military doctrine openly states, Washington seeks to assert itself as the absolute hegemon of the world capitalist system, exercising unrivaled control over every region of the world. This goal of world domination is objectively irrational, but follows logically from the limited rationality of the capitalist system. As a system of social-metabolic control, capital is constitutionally antagonistic, placing the demands of compound accumulation—commonly referred to as economic growth—in increasing opposition to the necessities of social reproduction and the interests of vast segments of the population. Rather than the universal prosperity originally promised by the champions of neoliberal “globalization,” this antagonistic way of organizing individual societies has been replicated by a hierarchical order at the inter-state level, the chief axis of which has been an imperial core composed of the United States, dominant Western European powers, and Japan, counterpoised to a heterogeneous periphery subjected to varying levels of underdevelopment, exploitation, expropriation, and domination. As the abject failure of appeals to notions of global environmental governance to seriously address climate change or any other dimensions of the Anthropocene crisis amply attest, not even the exigencies of human survival are sufficient to override the accumulation imperative that places each state, like each individual, in a perpetual war of each against all.
Various politicians, intellectuals, and media figures beholden to the ideology of capital accumulation continue to assert that the countries of the periphery can achieve similar levels of economic development, material wealth, and self-determination to those of the core by adhering to the policies prescribed by Washington and promulgated throughout the dominant international financial institutions, though empirical evidence to date has consistently falsified such claims. Rather, the core has systematically retained unequal relationships with the countries of periphery, denying them any meaningful degree of autocentric development or self-determination. This has allowed the monopolistic corporations that have dominated the capitalist system since the twentieth century and situated within the core to enhance their profitability by using the periphery as a source of inexpensive labor, raw materials, and markets for profitable investment and excess commodities. With notable exceptions, the domestic capitalists and politicians of the periphery have accepted domination by the core and content themselves with siphoning off a greater or lesser share of the profits flowing into the core.
In a very fundamental sense, therefore, imperialism is intrinsic to capital accumulation at a world scale. As such, instances where nationalist sentiments or desires for autonomy from the dictates of worldwide accumulation begin to take root within the periphery generally evoke intense hostility and extreme reactions from the rulers of the core, who are frequently aided by those domestic interests that benefit from foreign domination. Together, the threats of intervention and benefits of subservience generally keep the ruling strata of peripheral countries in line, such that moves towards more autocentric development and national self-determination require the initiative of popular forces, often organized around a socialist project. Combating such popular forces is a primary function of the vast amount of armaments and other military support the core supplies—to the profit of the executives and investors in the military-industrial complex, and at the expense of the general public whose tax revenues subsidize this investment in the means of destruction—to the periphery.
Breaking with this international order of hierarchical domination therefore represents a difficult challenge. Samir Amin has articulated this problem as one of “delinking,” in the sense of subordinating external market and other relations to the imperatives of internal development. Containing, isolating, and crushing such initiatives for internal, popular development has consistently been the overriding priority of U.S. foreign policy, and those of its imperial allies. The Cold War prosecuted against the former Soviet Union, the violent counterinsurgency operations Washington and its allies have carried out around the world, and the numerous acts of military aggression that Washington itself has undertaken are all imbricated in this need to exterminate nationalist and other aspirations to self-determination within the periphery—as well as the often violent and authoritarian means used to crush internal dissent. A recent [report] (https://www.sipri.org/publications/2025/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-international-arms-transfers-2024) by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute indicating that the United States alone was responsible for nearly half of all arms exports between 2020 and 2024, more than the next eight largest exporters combined, is ample testimony to the intrinsic link between militarism and imperialism.
This is the general context in which U.S. relations with Israel have developed. Israel, of course, began as a project of British colonialism after Britain and France set about dividing up the territory they plundered from the Ottoman Empire. When the United States took the helm of the imperial capitalist system after the second World War, it refined the mechanisms of European colonialism in SWANA—which primarily entailed a combination of puppet Arab rulers and extreme violence—by outsourcing responsibility for policing the region to reliable client states. In addition to mitigating to some degree the amount of direct retaliation to which the United States is exposed, this practice of operating vía client states bolsters the profitability of Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon Technologies), Northrop Grumman, and other members of the aforementioned death-dealing industry.
Initially, the United States relied on Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two central pillars of its control over SWANA. Washington planners were impressed with the brutality and efficiency with which the Zionist movement began its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the extreme violence and humiliation it repeatedly inflicted on Arab nationalist and anti-colonial initiatives in 1948 and afterwards, however, and the U.S. government increasingly began turning to Israel as its key client in the region following the 1956 Suez Crisis/War, and the Israeli-Arab Wars in 1967 and 1973. Israel, with U.S. and European backing, emerged as the leading military (and sole nuclear) power in the region. The Iranian Revolution in 1979, brought about by a unique alignment of popular forces, effectively eliminated one of the two central pillars of U.S. control, enhancing Israel’s importance in this respect. More recent moves by Saudi Arabia to strengthen ties with Russia and China—both of which Washington regards as the chief impediments to its imperial ambitions—as the world moves in a more multipolar direction has further left Israel as one of the only reliably dependent clients in the region.
With the Zionist movement making Israel into a settler-colonial state with expansionary ambitions, the country remains extremely militarized and an important source of regional instability. Rather than detrimental, such instability is highly conducive to U.S. interests. On the one hand, this renders Israel extremely dependent on U.S. military and political support, reducing the risk of it forming regional alliances outside Washington’s control or forming strong ties with Russia or China. On the other hand, Israel’s antagonisms with its neighbors often provide useful pretexts for military assaults and other attacks on Arab or Muslim states that foster anti-colonial sentiments, show signs of moving towards pan-Arab nationalism, or threaten to become formidable regional powers.
Despite its repeated efforts to crush its anti-colonial ambitions, including multiple Israeli military assaults prompted or implicitly sanctioned by Washington, Iran has succeeded in consolidating itself as just the counter-hegemonic regional power that Washington planners fear. Moreover, Iran has lent material support to anti-colonial forces throughout the region. Washington, accordingly, views Iran as a grave threat and the chief barrier to its complete domination of SWANA, and has consistently pursued a restructuring of regional power dynamics. In 2007, General Wesley Clark [revealed] (http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/2/gen_wesley_clark_weighs_presidential_bid) that the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was part of a plan by the Pentagon and the Bush Administration to overthrow seven countries in five years, with the invasion intended to move on to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and ultimately Iran. While that particular initiative proved unworkable due to determined anti-colonial resistance, Washington has certainly not abandoned the objective. It is worth noting in this context that, amid the savage assault on Gaza and resistance fighters throughout the region, Turkey, Israel, the United States, and other allies managed to successfully use Syrian opposition forces to overthrow the government of the Syrian Arab Republic on 8 December 2024. This was followed by brutal Israeli attacks on sites that could provide support to Palestinian resistance.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has brought both the general contours and elite disputes regarding Washington’s use of Israel into sharper relief. One prominent faction in this dispute has been advocates of the “realist” position, who view unconditional support for Israel as a liability to U.S. interests imposed by a powerful Israel Lobby in Washington. This faction suggests that Israel has diverted U.S. policy from a course more conducive to its interests in SWANA, and is responsible for undermining Washington’s esteem. This has prompted “neoconservative” members of the Israel Lobby to retaliate by emphasizing Israel’s strategic importance as a U.S. military base in the region and a threat to Iran, as well as appealing to shared values of “democracy” and “human rights.” Inasmuch as both Israel and the United States view democracy and human rights as completely dispensable when they interfere with strategic objectives of complete domination and subjugation of local populations, this is a valid point.
As a prominent voice in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and increasingly an extension of the Israel Lobby, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) provides useful insight into Washington’s perspective. As its point of departure, the CFR redefines regional order and security in SWANA as the feasible level of U.S. domination, and then designates Iran the primary source of disorder and insecurity, rendering US/NATO military interventionism virtually invisible. Accordingly, apart from occasional lamentations of Israeli excesses, the CFR has [praised] (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/narrow-path-new-middle-east) Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza and beyond for bringing “many of Iran’s allies to their knees” and lowering the bar for military strikes within Iranian territory. Perhaps intoxicated by the smell of blood, some voices within the CFR have advocated that the United States undertake [direct military action] (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/last-chance-iran) against Iran, while others have suggested that the United States use the opportunity to focus on building a new regional order in which Iran is isolated and its influence severely diminished. Several of these voices have also called for concerted efforts to weaken Russian and Chinese ties with state or popular forces in the region, and instead bind as much of the region as possible to the United States economically and politically as well as militarily.
For his part, Donald Trump seems to be shifting some [US priorities] (https://www.counterfire.org/article/why-trump-didnt-go-to-tel-aviv/) in the region, or perhaps out of the region. His administration appears to be seeking to strengthen ties with some traditional U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, with which Trump negotiated an arms deal worth $142 billion, and several of the Gulf states like Qatar. Much to Israel’s dismay, Trump also made a deal in Yemen to halt U.S. bombings in exchange for the Houthis halting attacks on U.S. ships, while leaving these forces free to continue attacks on Israel, and negotiated directly with Hamas to secure the release of Edan Alexander, the last remaining U.S. citizen among the hostages. Claiming that he was acting on a suggestion by Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, Trump furthermore eliminated all sanctions against Syria without mentioning the security assurances that Israel was pressing for—though it is also worth noting that the new Syrian president, former al Qaeda leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, does not seem to object to Israel’s illegal occupation of a large portion of Syrian territory. Most significant in terms of the Trump administration’s strategic priorities, however, are the reports that the administration is negotiating a deal that would eliminate sanctions against Iran in exchange for it halting any possible future nuclear weapons development by ending all high uranium enrichment (although Iran has not been pursuing nuclear development, and this would not constitute much of a concession on their part as they have long been seeking such an agreement), which would signal a definitive rejection of Israel’s calls for a military assault against Iran. That said, the Trump administration has continued the Biden administration’s supply of massive military aid, including some of the most lethal weapons used by Israel in its genocide in Gaza, and is even eliminating the relatively timid sanctions that that the Biden administration had placed on some extremist Israeli settlers. Trump undermined the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel by threatening the entire population of Gaza with death if Israeli hostages were not immediately released and proposed that the United States take ownership over Gaza and finalize its ethnic cleansing. The administration has reportedly approached Libya with a proposal to take up to one million Palestinians deported from Gaza. All of this indicates that Washington, under the Trump administration like the Biden administration before it, has been fully complicit in Tel Aviv’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the Zionist policy of settler colonialism.
Nevertheless, in line with its America First doctrine, the Trump administration appears to be seeking to minimize direct U.S. military commitments in the region and to obtain a sufficient degree of regional stability to shift resources and attention into intensifying Washington’s new Cold War against China, which has consistently been Trump’s primary foreign and military policy focus during both his administrations. As long as Israel’s attempts to wipe out the Palestinian people do not detract from the campaign against China, they are likely of little concern to the regime in Washington. Thus, while Trump “realists” may break ranks with “neoconservatives” in Washington who favor an immediate invasion of Iran, the America First policy with respect to Israel does not seem to differ significantly from previous U.S. policies.
Critical assessments have generally concurred that U.S. support for Israel derives more from strategic interests than the power of the Israel Lobby, which rather serves primarily to legitimize unconditional backing for Israeli aggression and demonize criticisms of Zionism or its genocidal project with allegations of anti-Semitism. The manner in which Trump sidelined Israel in several negotiations would also confirm this view, as it demonstrates that Washington can readily disregard Israel’s interests when these do not align with its own. The strategic importance of SWANA renders U.S. domination of the region virtually axiomatic, and inasmuch as Israel has consistently proven itself to be a useful asset in this respect, it is an asset to the empire. In addition to constantly threatening Iran, the Zionist state has assassinated popular figures who have promoted visions of Arab nationalism, humiliated Arab leaders who have pursued regional integration, and proven itself a useful partner to U.S. imperialism at a worldwide level by funneling U.S. support to reactionary counter-revolutionaries and dictators in Latin America and other parts of the world. As Max Ajl [notes] (https://doi.org/10.1177/22779760241228157), “throughout Latin America, Israel armed and trained genocidal anti-revolutionary counter-insurgency, from the Contras to Pinochet’s Chile to the sub-fascist junta in Argentina.” Thus, the strategic benefits of U.S. support for Israel are fairly well documented. Where critical assessments tend to diverge with the views of elites is over the legitimacy, desirability, rationality, and morality of U.S. domination of SWANA and the rest of the world, as well as the new Cold War against China.
Neoconservative analysts have acknowledged that Washington is actively encouraging Israel’s savage assault on Gaza, while anticipating that the regional instability this is creating will eventually provide an adequate pretext for direct military action against Iran. Realists argue that Washington views the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as a minor cost to ensuring stability in the region and Israel’s continued dependence on Washington. In either case, there is little doubt that U.S. elites view Israel as a reliable extension of their empire, a military base in SWANA (literally referred to by some as a giant aircraft carrier) that does not need to be staffed by U.S. soldiers. Certainly, whether the savage assault on Gaza was an Israeli or U.S. initiative, Washington has no qualms contemplating Israel’s genocidal eradication of the Palestinian people, even at the cost of bleeding credibility as a neutral third party to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those familiar with the history of U.S. interventions around the world are well aware of the readiness with which U.S. rulers are willing to tolerate or even encourage genocide when it advances their interests, as Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, among others, have extensively documented. William Blum provides a stark account of the thinking of U.S. elites on this issue in his account of account of Washington’s role in counter-revolutions around the world, Killing Hope, suggesting that the architects of U.S. imperialism “are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care … the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them … then they just don’t care about it happening to other people.”
The logical corollary to recognizing Israel as a sub-imperialist tool of U.S. empire is the reconceptualization of Palestinian and Iranian violence inflicted on Israel and its imperial sponsor as anti-colonial resistance, contrary to the characterization of this violence as nihilistic and criminal terrorism by the imperial powers. Franz Fanon has emphasized that counter-violence by the colonized is a necessary part of the struggle for national liberation and self-determination, without romanticizing such violence or denying its painful effects. Nor can anti-colonial violence necessarily be regarded as unambiguously criminal, despite the protestations of the colonial purveyors of far more extreme and indiscriminate violence and terrorism. As Fayez A. Sayegh, among countless other scholars, has argued, the right to pursue national self-determination through counter-aggression follows from the United Nations charter itself, and the right to resist colonial domination is widely recognized. While the tactics of violent resistance are subject to debate, blanket condemnations and categorical rejections of the violence of the oppressed, common to liberal discourse, amounts to a demand that the colonized surrender meekly to the colonizers and accept their extermination without opposition. One need not necessarily share the visions of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or other anti-colonial movements, nor offer them unconditional support, to recognize their right to struggle for national self-determination and liberation, and to condition support for such movements accordingly. As the various demonstrations in defense of the Palestinian people around the world have shown, the general principle of self-determination and self-defense is widely recognized, although the legitimacy of violent resistance remains more ambiguous. Certainly, one way to simplify the situation would be to deny the colonizers access to the means of inflicting violence, which is largely what these demonstrations have focused on. This suggests that mass demonstrations, together with tactics such as South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice and boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and other non-violent initiatives do not stand in diametrical opposition to violent resistance, but the two forms of resistance can function as complementary instruments of anti-colonial struggle.
Admittedly, support for national self-determination in SWANA, and violent resistance in particular, carries with it significant risks at the current juncture. Even before the return of Trump’s neofascist regime to the White House, the United States and various Western European powers reacted to the popular uprisings in support of Palestine with extreme oppression and have enacted highly authoritarian measures of control. Palantir CEO Alex Karp helpfully [explained] (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/17/ai-weapons-palantir-war-technology?utm_source=chatgpt.com) the rationale underlying elite reactions to public resistance to genocide and mass murder quite succinctly when he cautioned that, “if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the west ever.” In other words, Washington and its allies recognize that domestic anti-imperial movements pose a grave threat to the U.S. empire, and need to be eradicated.
Indeed, former president Joe Biden’s support for the oppression of activists and steadfast refusal to mitigate Israeli barbarism in Gaza earned him the nickname “Genocide Joe,” and helped to ensure his vice president Kamala Harris’s defeat by Trump in the presidential election, with large numbers of Arab and other voters refusing to back a candidate complicit in genocide. Nevertheless, the Trump administration elected in 2024 has given even more active support than its predecessor to repression of anti-genocide protesters. Large numbers of students believed to have been involved in campus protests have been arrested and (in the case of foreign students) deported. These actions are set within the context of a broader attack on both Muslims and Latin American migrants, and fit into a [neo-fascist] (https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/neofascism-in-the-white-house/) pattern of crushing internal dissent while persecuting and encouraging violence against targeted minorities. While the level of state and para-state violence Trump is mobilizing exceeds that of recent U.S. history, his decision to include critics of Israeli settler colonialism among his targets is entirely consistent with a core principle of U.S. policy.
Conversely, the failure to actively support anti-colonial resistance in SWANA arguably carries even graver risks. At a basic individual and moral level, it indicates quiescence, or perhaps even complicity, in an extensively documented and internationally recognized act of genocide against the Palestinian people. At more practical levels, it signals that the principle of impunity for those too rich and powerful to face formal justice continues to prevail, and allows U.S. imperialism to continue without facing significant resistance. To be clear, the imperial project being pursued by the United States is not only contrary to principles of self-determination, liberty, and justice, but represents an existential threat to civilization, and possibly humanity itself. Continued U.S. and Western European control over SWANA helps to ensure that fossil capital remains entrenched in the world system despite the increasingly urgent need to curtail carbon emissions if the threat of catastrophic climate change is to be reduced. Moreover, the imperial ambitions of the United States are propelling it headlong into an increasingly dangerous new Cold War with China that could escalate into open warfare and even a nuclear exchange. As John Bellamy Foster [has warned] (https://monthlyreviewarchives.org/index.php/mr/article/view/6132), capitalist imperialism is moving humanity into a phase of open exterminism.
The people of Latin America are not entirely external to this struggle. As previously mentioned, Israel has repeatedly armed and supported genocidal and counter-revolutionary regimes in the Americas and elsewhere. Trump, for his part, has already, in his new administration, attempted to initiate coups in Venezuela and has declared his intent to strengthen sanctions and other forms of economic terrorism against Cuba. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has gone as far as to [assert] (https://www.state.gov/restoring-a-tough-u-s-cuba-policy/) that “the Cuban regime has long supported acts of international terrorism,” suggesting that any aggression against the island nation will be considered legitimate. Moreover, the dehumanization, enclosure, and imprisonment of Palestinians, together with the targeting of Israeli Arabs, closely resembles—albeit on a much larger scale and to a much greater degree—what the U.S. government is doing to Mexican and other Latin American immigrants and U.S. citizens. Given that Washington is willing to stomach genocide against the Palestinian people to further its interests in SWANA, there is little doubt that it will not balk at any suffering that attacks on Latin American states or people it deems as insufficiently subservient to its interests inflict on civilian populations. Also concerning is the manner in which the United States [threatened] (https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2025/05/15/economia/eu-rechaza-proyectos-chinos-en-al-pondera-su-contribucion-al-bid) to withdraw funding for the Inter American Development Bank in retaliation for Colombia signing on to China’s Belt and Road initiative, as this indicates that Washington intends to turn Latin America into another battleground in its war with China.
Despite its historically close friendship with the United States, not even Mexico is entirely secure in this respect. In addition to threatening to inflict punishing tariffs on the country in order to coerce the Mexican state into both distancing itself from China and acting as an extension of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump has repeatedly suggested sending U.S. military forces into the country to combat the drug cartels, and even [pressured] (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/3/sheinbaum-says-she-rejected-trumps-offer-to-send-us-troops-to-mexico) president Claudia Sheinbaum to accept such “assistance.” While Sheinbaum has declared that Mexican sovereignty remains inviolable, in reality the Mexican state possesses few deterrents against unilateral U.S. military or clandestine intervention, should Washington decide to undertake it.
Abundant objective grounds, therefore, exist for international solidarity between the peoples of Latin America and SWANA in anti-colonial struggle, as well as ties with anti-imperial activists within the United States and other parts of the core. Inasmuch as it weakens U.S. hegemony and forces Washington to divert attention and resources away from Palestine, Iran, and the rest of SWANA, subversion of the U.S. influence in Latin America could bring some relief to the Palestinian people, while opening possibilities for the countries of both regions to delink from the worldwide system of capital accumulation and work towards more autonomous development. This is not to say that such efforts would be any easier or immune to violent reaction here than they are in SWANA or elsewhere. Again, the risks are grave, but those of inaction even graver. Ultimately, Washington views the people of SWANA and Latin America as entirely disposable, and will not hesitate to subject them to violence, misery, or death whenever and wherever U.S. interests—that is, the interests of U.S. elites—are at stake. Ultimately, perpetuation of the U.S. empire threatens all humanity with extermination. Resistance is an imperative of survival.
“La rebeldia es la vida: la sumisión es la muerte.”
(Rebellion is life: submission is death.)
—[Ricardo Flores Magón] (https://www.memoriapoliticademexico.org/Textos/6Revolucion/1910LaRev-RFM.html)
The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to John Bellamy Foster for his patient input during the development of this essay.