Washington Really Is Israeli-Occupied Territory

The American people have lost control of their government.

George D. O’Neill Jr.

Aug 13, 2025

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/washington-really-is-israeli-occupied-territory/

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress in July 2024, the Israeli premier received dozens of long and loud standing ovations. The enthusiastic response to his triumphalist speech brought to mind the joyous welcome given to a Roman general returning from a victorious campaign that brought glory to the Empire. Yet this was the leader of a small foreign country whose aggression brings it—and us—a cloud of shame.

Netanyahu, in the speech, boasted about the success of his nation’s campaign against Hamas. Of course, the Netanyahu regime has long indirectly supported Hamas, backing Qatar’s funding of the group. Hamas’s existence and continued rule over Gaza provides Israel a convenient excuse to divide, subjugate, and destroy the Palestinians instead of complying with any of the various “peace” deals it signed over the decades.

Netanyahu, by the time of his oration before U.S. lawmakers, had spent the previous eight months mercilessly attacking Gaza with U.S.-provided munitions. Israel was (and still is) bombing hospitals, churches, schools, water plants, and other civilian infrastructure, rendering most of Gaza uninhabitable. At the time, the mainstream narrative was repeating the “40,000 civilians killed” mantra. Mostly children, women, and other plainly innocent civilians—“collateral damage.” The real number may be even higher than the official count, with corpses buried under the rubble, and with civilians dying from lack of medicine and other basic needs.

As Netanyahu spoke, our congressional leaders enthusiastically applauded and cheered the perpetrator of this horror. Of course, July 2024 was the summer of an important election year, and they wanted to be seen demonstrating their fealty to the Israel lobby.

Questions remain about the Netanyahu government’s lack of preparation for the October 7 terror attacks. Some, including concerned Jews in and out of Israel, have even questioned whether the Netanyahu government was truly caught off guard.

The vaunted Israeli military/intelligence network has recently demonstrated its ability to infiltrate the Iranian government to shut off the Iranian missile defense and also, from inside Iran, to assassinate many leading military, scientific, and government officials. Does anyone seriously believe Mossad was unable to infiltrate Hamas, a ragtag group of fighters who live a short distance from Tel Aviv and are supported, in part, with Israel’s cynical acquiescence? There are voices from inside Israel who have called out the Netanyahu government for “ignoring” intelligence and relaxing the security cordon designed to protect from such an attack.

The Hamas attack by light troops armed with small arms in no way indicates a strategic threat to Israel, but the brutality of the Israeli response is eroding support for Israel across the world, perhaps irreversibly. 

Netanyahu has a history of seeing terror attacks as opportunities to exploit. When asked about the impact of 9/11 on U.S. relations with Israel, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu said of the traumatic event, “It is very good.” He then added, “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy,” meaning it will make Americans more sympathetic to Israelis. The Zionists had hoped for decades to use American military muscle to eliminate obstacles to the unfolding dream of a Greater Israel. (The First Gulf War had been insufficiently pursued by George H.W. Bush and was viewed as a missed opportunity.) 

After 9/11, the American political/military/foreign policy establishment, driven by Zionist Christians and conservatives, proceeded to wreck Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Lebanon. Iran is a work in process. The other countries in the region have been bought off and/or subjugated in one way or another (a subject for another article). Only the impecunious Houthis in tiny Yemen have somehow withstood the U.S.-Israeli onslaught, though they have been degraded and their country wrecked.

Many of these actions and policies are mostly hidden from the American people under a veil of propaganda dutifully maintained by the legacy media and political class. The American people have been kept in the dark about what our elites do in our name and with our money. The truth is probably uglier than we think. In Washington, corruption “investigations” are usually theater and opaque for “national security” reasons.

After six decades, we recently learned that the so-called “lone gunman” who killed JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a CIA asset. How much of the really embarrassing information pertaining to that event ended up in burn bags, like the thousands of documents from the Russia collusion investigation, which were recently found in a secret room in the FBI Hoover Building? How many thousands of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and other controversies were stuffed into burn bags and incinerated? 

We were already aware of small-scale destruction of sensitive materials, such as when President Bill Clinton’s national security aide, Sandy Berger, was caught removing and scissor-cutting copies of a classified document related to terror threats at the turn of the millennium. He received a slap on the wrist. Now, after the latest Russiagate revelation, unaccountable bureaucrats shoveling thousands of important documents into burn bags isn’t unthinkable. These concerns increase the gravity of the unreleased Epstein files and other significant documents which have been withheld.

Truly our government does not act as we the people wish it would. For the past century, Americans have voted over and over again to stop the forever wars, and every time a new president takes office he is confronted with some “emergency” requiring military action.

Last month the House of Representatives approved another $500 million dollars in aid for Israel’s military. Shortly after that, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recessed the House early to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Johnson then led a large congressional delegation to Israel. Remember, he has to raise millions of dollars for the house elections next year.

Americans feel betrayed and demand to know whose interests our government serves. It is certainly not the American people’s.