Israeli-American special relationship

inconsistencies concerning the so-called «Jewish Question», Zionism, «anti-Zionism» and Israël /Palestine The following texts were written in 2012 and 2014, and slightly modified for their translation. They criticize two books on the cover of which appears Alain Badiou's name. In reality, however, neither of these books is a real one, if by that word, we mean a scholarly study, based on reliable historical sources, and dealing with antisemitism, Zionism and the so-called «Jewish question 1 ». The first one, Antisemitism Everywhere, is an article printed in large letters to turn it into an editorial product that could pass for a «book». The second is a collection of articles, interviews and excerpts of texts. Alain Badiou has the reputation of being a «great Marxist philosopher». I am unqualified to judge his philosophical talent as my philosophical knowledge is quite limited. And I am not interested in labeling who is a «great Marxist» and who is not. I leave this job to Marxologists. In these two texts I have merely tried to show that Alain Badiou, by venturing into the realm of politics and history, says and writes a lot of nonsense, partly because he has not the proper knowledge to deal with historical and political facts (I could say the same thing about what he writes on China even he is a Maoist, because his ideological positions oblige him to discard or ignore basic facts). Hence my polemical and irreverent tone when faced with the texts of an intellectual who uses his authority acquired in the philosophical (and mediatic) 1 As noted by Danny Trom, in his book La promesse et l'obstacle (Editions du Cerf, 2007), one should establish a difference between the «Jewish question» (an expression wrongly used by many left-wing theoreticians) and «the Jewish problem». For DannyTrom, the «Jewish question» should describe the discussions among Jews themselves when they question their religious, cultural, political identities. What most leftwing militants call the «Jewish question» should be more accurately called the «Jewish problem» as Jews are a problem (and not a question) for conscious (or unconscious) anti-Semites and anti-Zionists. Trom skillfully turns the perspective around: he attacks those who don't understand «Jewish realities» ; those who are uncomfortable with Jewishness and Judaism because they do not fit into their small ideological boxes; or, to put it another way, those who consider Jews to be a problem (but do not dare to say it), a problem which they would like to «solve». Marx led the way with his article on The Jewish Question in which he explained Jews would disappear if they accepted to assimilate themselves into democratic bourgeois society. Many other Marxists followed this path since 1844, but history took a radically different course from their theories. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and today's left-and rightwing «Zionists» have thus only complicated the task of those who wish to see a world free of Jewish identities, whether religious, political (the State of Israel or Zionist associations) and/or cultural.

One of the remarkable phenomena in post-Cold War world politics is the persis-tence of the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in spite of recurrent announcement of its death by pessimists. Current scholarship on Anglo-American relations largely draws on interests and sentiments to explain the persistence of the AASR, ignoring other important contributing factors such as institutional-ization. This article is the first to give serious consideration to the role of institu-tionalization in influencing the persistence of the AASR. By using the concept of path dependence, this article argues that the high-level institutionalization in Anglo-American intelligence, nuclear and military relations plays a seminal role in contributing to the persistence of the AASR in the post-Cold War era. The insti-tutionalized intelligence relationship is exemplified by the relationship between the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), which is underpinned by the UKUSA Agree-ment. The institutionalized nuclear relationship is exemplified by a variety of Joint Working Groups (JOWOGs), which is underpinned by the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement. The institutionalized military relationship is exemplified by routin-ized military personnel exchange programmes, regular joint training exercises and an extremely close defence trade partnership. The high-level institutionalization embeds habits of cooperation, solidifies interdependence and consolidates mutual trust between the UK and the US in their cooperation on intelligence, nuclear and military issues