https://phantompain1984.substack.com/p/the-doctrine-of-pressure
By Phantom Pain
THE DOCTRINE OF PRESSURE
From Kennedy to Kirk: Sixty Years of Retaliation, Silence, and the Architecture of Influence
The Wound at the Center of the Alliance
It is one of the most extraordinary statements ever uttered by a former American ambassador to Israel — and all the more shocking because it came from David Friedman, a figure whose ideological loyalty to Israel was once considered absolute. In an attempt to counter Tucker Carlson’s arguments at the 2025 Doha Forum — arguments we will return to in a later section — Friedman made a confession that detonates the mythology of the U.S.–Israel alliance at its root. He said:
“The US imposed an arms embargo on Israel from 1948 until 1962. Israel begged three US presidents — Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy (the latter for 2 years) — for weapons and was rebuffed.” — David Friedman, former American ambassador to Israel.
What Friedman disclosed — perhaps without grasping the enormity of what he was admitting — is that the arms embargo he described did not merely strain the early relationship. It ended in 1962, the final full year of John F. Kennedy’s life. And in 1963, within months of Kennedy escalating his demands for unfettered inspections at Dimona, he was assassinated — an event followed almost immediately by Lyndon Johnson’s reversal of Kennedy’s Middle East policy. The shift was not gradual, not debated, not contested. It was instant. A 180-degree transformation in U.S. posture toward Israel occurred in the space between Kennedy’s coffin leaving Dallas and LBJ’s first months in office. Pressure evaporated. Nuclear oversight died. The embargo regime Friedman referenced disappeared forever.
U.S.–Israel relationship was born not in mutual trust, but in mutual suspicion. Washington viewed early Israeli militarization as a spark that could ignite a wider regional war; Israel believed American restraint threatened its survival.
This investigation follows the line they never wanted connected: Kennedy’s showdown with Dimona; the retaliatory ethic later declared openly by Mossad leadership; Charlie Kirk’s unprecedented break with major donors just 48 hours before his death; and Tucker Carlson’s Doha confrontation with Israel’s dominant Western narrative, a moment that forced the entire architecture of political pressure into the open. Together, these moments reveal a single, continuous mechanism of power — one that has shaped U.S. policy for sixty years and is now impossible to ignore.............................
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https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/rebranding-genocide
By Chris Hedges
Rebranding Genocide
The Genocide in Gaza has not stopped. It has been rebranded. And that is enough of a linguistic subterfuge to get the world to ignore it.
First, it was Israel’s right to defend itself. Then it was a war, even though, by Israel’s own military intelligence database, 83 percent of the casualties were civilians. The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, living under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade, have no army, air force, no mechanized units, no tanks, no navy, no missiles, no heavy artillery, no fleets of killer drones, no sophisticated tracking systems to map all movements, or an ally like the United States, which has given Israel at least $21.7 billion in military aid since Oct. 7, 2023.
Now, it is a “ceasefire.” Except of course, as usual, Israel only abided by the first of the 20 stipulations. It freed around 2,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons — 1700 of whom were detained after Oct. 7 — as well as around 300 bodies of Palestinians, in exchange for the return of the 20 remaining Israeli captives.
Israel has violated every other condition. It has tossed the agreement — brokered by the Trump administration without Palestinian participation — into the bonfire with all the other agreements and peace accords concerning Palestinians. Israel’s extensive and blatant flouting of international agreements and international law — Israel and its allies refuse to abide by three sets of legally binding orders by the International Cout of Justice (ICJ) and two ICJ advisory opinions, as well as the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law — presage a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.
The sham peace plan — “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” — in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the U.N. Security Council in November, with China and Russia abstaining. Member states washed their hands of Gaza and turned their backs on the genocide..................................
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