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If you believe the US-Israel relationship is built on some billion shekels, then sure that's a possibility.
But what about the extensive interoperability created from decades of joint ops? What about the co-developed missile defence systems? Multiple mid-level officials across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, as well as key committees (Armed Services and Foreign Affairs) have entire careers, doctrines, and planning assumptions built around the US-Israel relationship, and favour continuity. Multiple laws, MOUs, and bipartisan resolutions across 8 decades have created locked-in commitments. Changing this needs a historically rare sustained coordination across both parties to amend many, many layers of complex legal procedures over a foreign policy issue.
Are you willing to bet AOC can girlboss her way through such overwhelming institutional inertia and rewrite war plans and agreements to overturn 8 decades of sustained policymaking?
@FtttG 's point is that these movements rarely impact foreign policy, abortion is a domestic matter. But the fact that both BLM and Palestine protests erupted across Europe, Australia and New Zealand clearly shows they were US culture war exports.
There seems to be a motte and bailey in your argument. The fact that AOC cannot completely over night turn Israel into a pariah, does not mean that she (or someone like her) cannot take serious steps to disadvantage Israel.
Aipac is spending 100 million or more each cycle now to keep their representatives in congress and senate. That is a big increase from previously. They are quite obviously doing this because "their" candidate winning is important to keep the rest of Dems in line.
I think we will see, but a DSA member winning statewide in a swing state (which seems possible at this point) is a rare moment indeed. It quite obviously will have knock-on effects.
You said
That's some strong vocabulary, and does insinuate that by 2032-36, we would have seen the type of policy reversals that I described. That institutional inertia, i.e. the airtight legal architecture and bureaucratic path dependence, is the decisive factor in the US-Israel relationship. And anything short of overturning those thick set of constraints, even by a trifle, is frankly a consolation prize. Realistically, yes, aid packages can be delayed, conditions can be dictated, criticisms can mount, and specific arms transfers can be slowed or scrutinised. Variants of that have already happened in limited ways under Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.
Re AIPAC, consider that it is a human organisation run by humans with very human judgements that are neither perfect nor 100% rational. Yes, public opinion has turned against Israel and even American Jews by extension.
Yes, they're a fundamentally pro-Israel lobby, and obviously wish to preserve a pro-Israel public consensus for that reason alone. That by itself isn't evidence of anything.
AIPAC is headed by American Jews. They are naturally concerned by the rise of rancid antisemitism both online and IRL that doesn't care to distinguish Netanyahu from IDF/Mossad from Israel from regular Jews. And that could directly impact their immediate livelihoods. In their minds, protecting American Jews is analogous to defending Israel.
To you, this wave of antisemitism may be justified or at least excusable, because this time the Jews have truly earned it by bombing Palestinian babies. But to the group whose ethnic and cultural history is marked by the Holocaust, multiple ethnic cleansings and pogroms, and all around scapegoating, that just brings up very unpleasant memories irrespective of context. So yes, they want "their" candidates to win. But even if they don't, the US-Israel relationship would still be protected by institutional inertia.
And I dont believe this at all. Yes, the institutional inertia is a factor, but Israel has had such a chokehold on some politicians that it goes way beyond this. We are in a position now where the US is depleting its own missile defense in a war that serves no obvious benefits for anyone except Israel.
This is interesting. So we are supposed to believe that hundreds of millions are being spent by what is arguably the most successful lobbying operation to ever exist, and it is all for no reason at all? Because nothing can change! Yeah, I am going to trust Aipacs judgement on this, over yours.
You say this like the institutional apparatus that no single President can overturn is somehow ancillary to "some politicians". It all comes down to Zionist Inc, who are "beyond" supposedly anything?
Pointing to high spending and a few costly policy choices (missile stocks, etc.) does not by itself demonstrate that the relationship is held together by a uniquely captured political class rather than by a thick combination of strategic continuity, bureaucratic path dependence, legal commitments, and mutual military utility. Those layers can absorb a good deal of friction before they actually reverse. The fact that the relationship remains costly for the US does not prove it is irrational from the standpoint of the institutions that maintain it, it only proves that the costs of reversing it are real and that the institutions have so far judged them worth bearing.
And the engine behind this is the strength of the American state apparatus itself.
I repeat, we're talking 8 decades of joint planning, co-developed systems, intelligence sharing protocols, formal MOUs, and career tracks across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community have embedded the relationship into the operating assumptions of the national security bureaucracy. Key committees treat this continuity as the default. Legal and procedural commitments accumulate over time. Once a foreign policy relationship reaches that level of sustained institutionalisation, reversing it would require the entire state apparatus crafting a uniquely exigent response against its own characteristic habit to resist abrupt shifts. That is a much higher bar than generating noise or imposing marginal costs.
You are free to trust AIPAC’s revealed sense of urgency more than the institutional analysis. But urgency is not the same as fragility. A lobby can be highly competent at defending a structure that is still deeply embedded, and still feel the need to spend aggressively when the political weather turns against it.
Zionists, Mossad, the CCP, competent as they are, are still run by humans. They're not the calculating hiveminds you see in Hollywood. IRL conspiracies are messy, imperfect, and boring. Internal churns happen, personalities and egos clash, some of them are rank incompetents who simply knew the right people, and some of them are greedy bastards who just want to add more zeroes to their bank account.
All of these facts sit comfortably together.
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Even domestically, I'd say BLM's material gains were fairly meagre (for everyone other than Patrisse Cullors and co.).
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