> Not sure whom you're caricaturing here, but Israel would be lucky just to
> exist within its 1967 borders without U.S. money and weapons. It would never
> have been able to do what it's been doing to Gaza. Without $7.5 billion
> transfers - essentially official and private aid from the U.S. - it would be
> running a giant current account deficit. Instead of having its international
> assets roughly in balance, it'd be a debtor at the feet of the IMF.
U.S. transfers are about 2.5% of Israeli GDP, so it's not *completely* inconceivable that Israel could do without U.S. aid, especially given Israel's fairly advanced capitalist economy and considering the possibility of other powers, say China or Europe, filling the gap. But I agree with you. The U.S. has largely financed the occupation and Israel would be in deep fiscal trouble without it.
But that doesn't follow that Israel is tool for U.S. interests, and that its actions are all designed toward advancing them. This also probably sounds like a caricature, but it's quite literally the position of Chomsky (for a distilled version of his views on this, watch the video I posted last week), various Trot grouplets, and other anti-imperialists. I think it's a little dangerous to make the U.S. responsible for Palestinians' plight, for several reasons, not least because the Palestinians are fighting the IDF, not some archaic abstraction called imperialism.