Malaysian Scholars Foundation

Field: Contemporary issues, Sociology
Title: The Power of Israel in the United States
Author: James Petras
Publication: Clarity Press, Inc. 2006
ISBN: 0-932863-51-5
Rating: 4/5
Level: Intermediate
Reviewed by: Safwan

In almost two hundred pages, James Petras seeks to enlighten readers, especially Americans, on how he believes his country has been nodding to Israel’s orders. In this relatively brief work, the American Professor of Sociology has laid copious evidence and facts, from which he worked his theory out, of which many have found it in better harmony with truth and contemporary reality.

The pre-assessment starts as he reviewed and makes readers ponder the Palestine issue; how Zionists have been intractably belligerent, the many international laws let alone human rights it has ignored, and the astonishingly ‘dynamic’ stand the US held on democracy in Gaza. He did not miss mentioning the fact that 60 and 35 percent of democratic and labour party’s funding comes from affluent Jewish pro-Zionist organizations, rendering any candidate from these parties an incumbent serviceman to Israeli interest.

On the Big Oil theory, Professor Petras have found some major inconsistencies. He discloses about most American companies’ interest in establishing good rapport and business ties with the middle east, and that the last thing they would want is instability in that region. With the Iraq invasion, dubbed by many as the US’ greed for oil, ironically not one US company has benefited from such gruesome act. Instead, facts tell us the opposite: they directly and immediately suffer a great deal of losses- in fact, the whole world was affected.

The writer, all along this work, tries to put forward his evidence-supported theory of Israel’s power in the US. It is Israel who largely benefits from Iraq’s power vacuum, which used to be its real threat only a few years back. The nature of Iraq’s war itself is self-explanatory; universities bombed, libraries raided, hospitals destroyed, citizens massacred, and intellectuals assassinated- to leave Iraq disabled for a ‘safe’ number of years, or even better, never to stand again.

The presence of Zionist Firsters like Wolfowitz, Abrams, and Feith (to name but a few) as top-ranked officials in the Pentagon ensures the perfusion of Israeli interest- on top of the diehard lobby they could and are mustering. Even the CIA is struggling to win the infamous Zionist-oriented OSP (Office of Special Plans) in the race to supply intelligence to the presidency. In the writer’s words, “it’s a war within”.

Professor Petras continued filling the pages with more facts contradicting the Jewish-controlled media propaganda, covering Lebanon War, Iran nuclear threat, terrorism, suicide bombers, Israeli betrayal of America, etc. He ends the book with countering the arguments from a celebrated professor’s theses, whose work denies the existence of Israeli Lobby in the American administration.

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