By Qamar Bashir
The Israel-Iran conflict has revealed a truth the Muslim world can no longer afford to ignore: Israel is not invincible. Without the shield of the United States, it is not the iron fortress it pretends to be—it is fragile, overstretched, and deeply dependent. But once wrapped in the diplomatic, military, and political embrace of Washington, Israel becomes a force few dare to challenge. It is not superior military strategy or moral high ground that sustains Israeli power—it is American sponsorship, bought and secured through decades of strategic manipulation.
No amount of resistance in Gaza, no fiery speech at the United Nations, no emotional outcry from the Muslim world will dismantle Israel’s machinery of oppression. Because that machine doesn’t run on Israeli fuel—it runs on Washington’s power grid: congressional endorsements, media narratives, think tanks, and corporate lobbying.
And Israel’s greatest tool to harness that power is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—a political juggernaut that does not merely influence U.S. policy, it engineers it. With over $100 million spent in the 2024 elections alone, AIPAC and its Super PACs didn’t just promote pro-Israel candidates—they systematically crushed dissent, targeting Muslims, progressives, and even Jewish critics of Israeli apartheid. Through campaign donations, policy drafting, media alignment, and think tank funding, AIPAC ensures that support for Israel is not just bipartisan—it’s mandatory.
The irony is staggering. The U.S. sends Israel $3.8 billion in military aid annually. Israel uses that money to fund lobbying infrastructure that then cycles back into American politics, shaping public opinion and buying silence. This is not foreign policy—it is political laundering.
And yet, there is an even darker undercurrent to this influence—one rooted not just in money, but blackmail and coercion. That shadowy underside came dangerously close to exposure with the saga of Jeffrey Epstein.
Though widely branded as a disgraced financier and sex offender, Epstein’s real role was far more sinister. Backed by vast, unexplained wealth and cloaked in luxury, Epstein constructed an elite trap—an opulent web of yachts, villas, and underage girls designed not for personal pleasure alone, but for surveillance and leverage. Powerful politicians, industrialists, scientists, and media figures were lured in, indulged, and secretly recorded. His guest list included former presidents, royalty, billionaires, and lawmakers—many now suspiciously silent.
According to multiple intelligence reports and leaked sources, Epstein was an operative tied to Mossad, Israel’s elite spy agency. The data gathered—videos, images, confidential conversations—formed a cache of blackmail so extensive and so damning that it could paralyze the upper echelons of American power. Epstein’s mysterious death in custody—whether suicide or assassination—is widely believed to have been an effort to prevent those secrets from ever seeing daylight. What remains is a chilling reality: those files still exist—and they’re being weaponized by Mossad to control, blackmail, and compromise the very people entrusted with U.S. policymaking.
This is why every resolution at the UN demanding accountability for Israel is vetoed. Why every bomb dropped on a school in Gaza is whitewashed. Why every massacre is met with the same script: “Israel has a right to defend itself,” “Hamas uses human shields,” “It’s complicated.” These aren’t diplomatic statements—they are the product of manipulated consensus created by fear, funding, and in some cases, deep compromise.
The Muslim world’s response to this has been, at best, symbolic. Protests erupt. Speeches are delivered. Hashtags trend. But the facts on the ground remain unchanged. Gaza still burns. Settlements still grow. Aid convoys are still bombed into oblivion. Because the real battlefield is not Gaza—it’s Washington, D.C. And unless Muslims engage there—with the same precision, professionalism, and persistence as Israel—nothing will change.
This is not a call for violence. This is a call for strategy.
Muslims have failed to build a lobbying apparatus to challenge AIPAC’s grip on American power. Yet the resources are not lacking. The Gulf States alone manage over $2 trillion in sovereign wealth. Even a fraction—just $1 billion annually—could fund an American-staffed, data-driven, secular Muslim PAC, built not on sermons, but on strategy. Former lawmakers, PR experts, constitutional lawyers, media consultants, and think tanks could be mobilized to reshape the American narrative from within.
This would not be “interference.” It would be participation in democracy—the very kind Israel has perfected. It would fund candidates who support justice, oppose apartheid, and understand that human rights cannot be selective. It would challenge biased media through ownership and oversight. It would publish studies, mobilize communities, organize town halls, and train the next generation of Muslim American leaders to speak in the language Washington understands—policy and power.
Some will recoil at the idea of using money and lobbying to influence governance. But this is how the American system works. Corporate America lobbies. The gun industry lobbies. Big Pharma lobbies. Christians, Jews, Armenians, Cubans, Taiwanese—all have professional lobbying infrastructure. The only group that continues to shout from the outside is Muslims—and that isolation is costing innocent lives.
Now, cracks are forming in Israel’s carefully choreographed illusion. Western academics like Judith Butler and Pankaj Mishra are labeling Israeli policies as genocidal. Editorials in CNN, BBC, and even the New York Times have begun questioning Israel’s brutality. European parliaments are debating sanctions. Youth protests across American campuses are echoing the cries of “Free Palestine.” Even Jewish activists are joining the calls. And yet, despite all this growing unrest, nothing changes—because Israel still owns the power centers of the United States.
More disturbingly, Israeli thinkers now justify conquest with colonial analogies—likening the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to the U.S. treatment of Native Americans or the British colonization of Africa. This isn’t just immoral—it’s legally and philosophically bankrupt. If colonial conquest is acceptable, so too is resistance—as enshrined in international law, the UN Charter, and the Geneva Conventions.
Palestinians, like Afghans before them, have the right to resist occupation. But until the machine enabling that occupation is dismantled, resistance alone will not prevail.
That machine is AIPAC. It is Epstein’s tapes. It is Mossad’s silent hand. And it is America’s refusal to confront its own corruption.
So here lies the choice for the Muslim world: keep protesting, or start investing. Stop reacting—and start shaping. Replace symbolic outrage with strategic influence. Build a Muslim AIPAC. Fund campaigns. Draft bills. Support honest media. Train candidates. Influence education. Enter the boardroom. Make standing for Palestine profitable and political suicide to oppose it.
Only when the cost of supporting Israel outweighs the benefits will the tide turn. And only then will the Palestinians find what they’ve long deserved—not pity, but power. Not charity, but justice. Not slogans, but sovereignty.
Because the war for Palestine will never be won with rockets from Rafah—but with policies from Capitol Hill. And the blueprint for victory does not lie in ancient grievances—it lies in Washington, D.C.
By Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former MD, SRBC | Macomb, Michigan, USA
