I respectfully, but strongly disagree that she was trying to talk about about dirty money in general. I think she was a little more interested in talking about the Israeli lobby in particular. Right or wrong, there is a wide spread belief that the USA enables Israel to slaughter Palestinians. I think the thoughts on dirty money were secondary to that.
Why wide spread... of course the USA enable Israel to do just that - America sells shitloads of tons of weapons to Israel, what else are weapons being used for - slicing bread? But so do many other countries that as well, and that's not the point about the whole shebang.
But America is also the most important ally of Israel, and this will continue for a long time, because America and Israel have much in common. Since its founding in 1948 most neighbors were very eager to just delete Israel from the map, many tried and all so far have failed to achieve it. So most neighbors by now have learned the hard way to not go to war with Israel, because it has the strongest army in the region - period.
Where I do agree is that some pro Israel/Jewish organizations are always quick to wield the antisemitism club, to silence any kind of discussion at the very first beginning, and many people still just fell for it. There's even a whole book about this thesis, being written from Norman G. Finkelstein and named
"The Holocaust Industry." Finkelstein himself is a Jew and son survivors from the Holocaust, nobody else probably could have written such a provocative book than somenone featuring this combo. And yes, there are of course lots of pro Israel lobby organizations in America, but also Arabian ones for example. The almost unlimited support for Israel runs way deeper than just money which is flowing around.
And both sides don't want to get peace. The lessons Israel learned though so far is that any time they tried to get it, they've been disappointed. Both sides are doing bad things; you cannot point just your finger at one out and neglect the other, this just simply doesn't work there that way.
The normal press coverage also is most of the time very much one sided - pro Palestine in most Western countries, which does the whole clusterfuck no justice at all.
And I do know one thing for sure: let's just say Mexico would start to behave like the Gaza strip, and shoot on a daily base
Qassam rockets at American territory, to cause civilian deaths - Mexico would have been invaded by now a long time ago. But this is exactly what still happens with Israel, they are getting fired at a daily base with rockets from the Gaza strip since years, which caused many civilian deaths. The typical press coverage this will get though is that normally the press only reports the revenge action by the IDF, not really mentioning or only shortly mentioning what happened before, giving a skewed picture of what has happened. Still though too many deaths on both sides, and three year army service is mandatory for both genders in Israel.
That's the reason why Israel developed the
Iron Dome defense system. Since I guess most of us do enjoy the luxury of living in save countries, we just cannot imagine really what this daily threat is doing to the people there. Since 2001 about 20.000 rockets where fired at Israel, most originating from the Gaza strip.
And getting peace there means also that other problems need to be solved as well, like the Jerusalem questions and distribution of water.
I am pretty convinced that peace is not feasable with Netanyahu and the Hamas as well. Another big problem is that so many foreign countries are meddling with the inner affairs of that conflict, that''s it not even funny, and all got different goals as well.
In the meantime Israel has learned one thing - if we want to have safety, we cannot rely on others, but must it achieve on our own. And that's exactly what they are doing, they just don't really care any longer about what the world thinks about them while they've been struggling to survive since decades. Another part of that strategy are their nuclear warheads, which existence they never confirmed or denied. Of course since 1986
Mordechai Vanunu told the world about the existence, it's been on open secret.
And 2015 the Pentagon itself confirmed the existence, because Obama was deeply pissed at Netanyahu and disclosed a trove of formerly secret papers, including many details on the weapons program.
America is an important factor for Israel. I doubt though that America is able to achieve much if it would ever change their mind, because Israel is just doing what in their opinion will take it to survive, and for sure they won't wait on other countries making up their mind. If America ever pulls back, other countries maybe might be filling that vacuum, like Russia or China, and that alone is reason enough why America will never do that.
One well known critic of the Israel/American special relationship is Noah Chomsky, who has written a bunch of books on that topic; Chomsky is ocnvinced that America is a major factor why there is no peace. Often criticised though for being one sided, but the whole area is such a minefield that almost nobody can write something without getting accused of that.
I am pretty sure, that this conflict is still going to last for a long time, that our whole understanding about it is just barely superficial at best, and there's not much we can do about it. The will for peace must bear fruit in the region; people like
Uri Avnery tried that for their whole life, and didn't reach their goal.
