The Architecture of Empire: Walter L. Hixson on the Israel Lobby and the Machinery of Endless War

Send us Fan MailThe Architecture of Empire: Walter L. Hixson on the Israel Lobby and the Machinery of Endless WarPart Two: The Nakba’s Blast Radius and the Capture of U.S. Foreign PolicyEpisode DescriptionSeventy-eight years ago, the Nakba dismantled Palestinian society. Today, we are living inside its blast radius.What began in 1948 with the violent mass displacement of over 700,000 people has metastasized into a sprawling, multi-front geopolitical fire. We are now watching the Middle East get swallowed by a disastrous and widely rejected regional war with Iran—a conflict fueled by corrupt demagogues desperate to trade human lives for their own political survival.How does a republic repeatedly bankrupt its moral standing and its treasury to underwrite conflicts its citizens actively despise? It doesn’t happen by accident. It is engineered.In Part Two of our historical deep-dive into the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship, host Jeremy Rothe-Kushel reaches back to a profoundly relevant late-2021 conversation with diplomatic and cultural historian Walter L. Hixson.Stripping away the polite fictions of Washington double-speak, Hixson exposes the actual plumbing of imperial power. We break down the modern Israel lobby in plain daylight: the massive flow of capital, the ruthless political coercion, and the organized infrastructure of silence that captures U.S. foreign policy and locks the American public into a perpetual cycle of militarism and repression.If we are ever going to extinguish the fire, we must first understand exactly who built the furnace. Step beyond the walls with us.Guest Bio: Walter L. Hixson is a diplomatic and cultural historian, a contributing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the author of numerous vital books, including Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Imperialism and War: The History Americans Need to Own.Listen & Explore Further:Walter Hixson’s Bio & Work: University of AkronExplore the Show Archives: Listen to past episodes, including Part 1 with Grant Smith, at the KKFI Understanding Israel Palestine archive: kkfi.org/program/understanding-israel-palestine/Beyond the Walls Substack: beyondthewalls.substack.com