I liked this article ....

by the Canadian intellectual Denis Rancourt. Prof Rancourt has a horde of enemies who have been maligning him right, left and centre  ... but that has never stopped him from speaking his mind.  

Denis Rancourt writing at DissidentVoice:
The Intended Roles  of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace

Several misguided commentators have advanced that Canada’s unconditional support for Israel is the result of Christian Zionist ideology.

This is flat wrong, and inexcusably naive. Harper’s unconditional support for Israel is not from right-wing or religious ideology. Nor is this the case in the US itself.

Canada’s unconditional support for Israel started under former-Prime-Minister Paul Martin after he took over (and destroyed) the Liberal Party of Canada. And the take-over was one additional step from some degree of Canadian sovereignty to complete alignment with the US master.

That Canada has become a vassal to the US Empire — and subservient to the Empire’s military and finance economy — also explains the new prominence of the Israel lobby in Canada.

The purpose and function of the US Israel lobby is central to the US Empire, and the international Israel lobby — which radiates from the US base — is prominent and powerful in every Western democracy that aligns itself under the US Empire, such as France and Canada. (It can’t seem to settle-in to the UK, which recently rejected an outright invasion of Syria.)

Despite appearances, the Israel lobby does not “control” the US Empire, in a top-down fashion. Rather, it serves to align and discipline all the politicians (and media and intellectuals), in order to block discourse that would threaten the Empire’s global exploitation project.

What started as a lobby that benefited from creating support for Israel as the US agent of discord in the Muslim World has become a highly perfected instrument of internal political alignment with the project of Empire.

The US Empire and the now-international Israel lobby are in a tightly woven symbiotic relation. They are inseparable.

One of the Empire’s main concerns is to prevent the emancipation of the Muslim World in the Middle East, in order to control energy reserves and energy distribution routes. Israel is the Empire’s main strategy to achieve the dividing, conquering, weakening, and destabilizing of the Middle East.

If the Empire’s strategy in the Middle East were more varied, then both Israel and the Israel lobby would lose power and influence. So the lobby is committed to ensuring that Israel is the main show in the Middle East.

Countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, and Syria that dare to practice some independence from the Empire — in terms of commerce, alliances, and monetary policy — must be destroyed. Independence cannot be allowed to survive or spread. The same is true of South and Central America, but these are the US backyard that can be rearranged at will, and this backyard has little geopolitical relevance because there is no possibility of strong territorial ties with Europe, Asia, Africa… That is the thinking until things get out of hand.

The Empire is run on brute force and pillaging, in as many arenas as possible. The financial and corporate instruments of exploitation are imposed through the threat and regular actuation of military intervention...........