The state of Israel has functioned as a military bastion to defend and extend U.S. domination over the strategic area of the Middle East and worldwide—in the context of establishing U.S. supremacy over other imperialist powers. Israel is by far the largest recipient of U.S. support: in outright grants, military sales, and economic support.

From 1981 to 2004, the U.S. sent $1.8 billion a year in military support to Israel; since 2004 that number has been raised to $2.4 billion. Part of the bargain is that the U.S. often utilizes Israeli military and intelligence as a proxy to distance itself from some of its most odious and barbaric crimes around the world.

The U.S. does this because it is an imperialist mega-power spanning the globe, and it enforces its domination with savage repression, including mass murder, genocide, torture, rape, and dispossession of entire peoples. Israel's function as a militarized state bristling with the most advanced weaponry deludes many people into thinking Israel is somehow acting against U.S. interests as it perpetrates monstrous crimes against humanity.

But the cold fact is this is one important means by which U.S. domination has been enforced. U.S. backing for all Israel's crimes is not because the American political process has been corrupted by the Israel lobby or "the Jews." The U.S. arms and supports this brutal regime because doing so serves its global objectives.

1. Guatemala, 1978-1984: One of the most barbaric atrocities in history occurred in Guatemala under the direction of the U.S. and its Guatemalan puppet, the Christian fundamentalist butcher Ríos Montt. This slaughter included beheadings, massive rape, slaughter of pregnant women, and the abduction of Mayan children who were sold or given as slaves to functionaries of the fascist Guatemalan regime. At least 180,000 Mayan peasants were murdered. "Operation Sofia," as it was called, was determined by the United Nations "Historical Clarification Commission" to have committed "acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people." In 1982, as exposures of these massacres were coming to light, the New York Times reported that U.S. "Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. prompted Israel to do more in Guatemala." Israel played an essential and central role in the epic slaughter—supplying transport to remote villages, war planes, military training, "advisors," and 10,000 Uzis. In 1982, under the direction of the U.S. military, Israeli commanders devised and helped implement a scorched earth policy (burn all, kill all) for the Guatemalan highlands.
2. Argentina 1976-1983: In the 1970s, the U.S. was under worldwide pressure from its imperialist rivals in the formerly socialist, but now imperialist, Soviet Union. U.S. rulers were especially concerned about growing Soviet influence in South and Central America—regions they had long considered their "backyard." To counter the Soviet presence, "Operation Condor" was hatched by U.S. intelligence agencies as a campaign of political terror and repression in the "southern cone" of South America, including Argentina. In 1976, the military junta in Argentina began a reign of terror known as la guerra sucia—"the dirty war." U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told a meeting of Argentine generals "if there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly." In the nightmare that followed, up to 30,000 people were abducted, tortured, and "disappeared." Students, intellectuals, trade unionists, leftists and suspected armed guerrillas were targeted. The military's widespread pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic outlook produced "particular brutality in the treatment of prisoners of Jewish origin." Yet, during this period, and under the direction of the U.S. baton, Israel became one of the Argentine junta's largest arm suppliers, providing jet planes, missiles, patrol boats, spare parts, small arms and ammunition.
3. Iran 1967-1986: The Shah of Iran was installed in power by a U.S.-engineered coup in 1953. The Shah was a brutal tyrant who turned Iran—oil rich and strategically situated—into a client of U.S. imperialism. Beginning in the late 1950s, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, played a major role in training the Shah's notoriously brutal Savak. Thousands of Iranians were tortured and killed by Savak. After Israel's wars on its neighbors in 1967 and 1973, and as opposition to the Shah's regime pulsed through Iran, Israel's "Project Flower" sent Iran up to $500 million of military and police equipment.
4. South Africa 1948-1994: The apartheid regime of South Africa, which ended in 1994, enforced white supremacy as its official, legal system. It brutally dispossessed the black majority of their land, liberty and human rights. Millions of black people were forced into squalid "townships." "Pass laws" required black people to show ID at all times. South Africa acted as a bulwark of U.S. domination in southern Africa and Africa as a whole. For decades the U.S. "stood by" this ugly regime; for decades Israel armed South Africa, sending the racist regime Uzi submachine guns, fighter jets, patrol boats, missiles, communications and intelligence equipment, armored personnel carriers and artillery. Israel and South Africa worked together in their development of nuclear weapons.
5. India 2010: On July 1, 2010, a unit of the Andhra Pradesh Special Intelligence Bureau [Andhra Pradesh is a state in India] abducted and assassinated Azad, Communist Party of India (Maoist) Political Bureau member and spokesperson, and Hem Pandey, a zonal committee-level member of the CPI (Maoist). According to A World To Win News Service, "The Andhra Pradesh Special Intelligence Bureau has been partly trained by the Mossad [Israeli intelligence]..." These assassinations were carried out in the context of "Operation Green Hunt," the Indian government's military campaign to defeat the CPI (Maoist).
6. Middle East, 1948-present: Since 1948, the state of Israel has meant the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and war on the adjacent countries. Since its founding, Israel has launched wars or military aggression against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to destroy and expel the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israeli troops stood guard outside the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon as their Lebanese Phalangist [pro-Israeli fascist militia] allies went door to door gunning down whole families, raping women and girls before murdering them, and castrating men and boys. Estimates of the number of dead range from 700 to several thousand. In 2007, Israel imposed a blockade against the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza. Living conditions became unbearable and the United Nations warned of a humanitarian crisis. From December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, Israel struck Gaza with massive air attacks and a ground invasion. At least 1,300 Palestinians were killed and countless homes wiped out.