Introduction: The Golem and Its Creator

In the lore of Jewish mysticism, the golem is a being of clay—shapeless, voiceless, but immensely powerful—brought to life by a righteous man to defend the Jewish people. Animated by divine words and sealed with sacred symbols, the golem serves its purpose dutifully—until it does not. At some point, in most tellings, the golem becomes erratic, destructive, or unmanageable. The very force raised to protect the community threatens to destroy it, and its maker must strike the name of God from its brow to return it to dust.

This allegory was born in Prague, but it may just as well have been written in Washington. In the decades following the Second World War, the United States brought into being a guardian for Israel—an immense force of diplomatic, military, financial, and cultural backing—intended to protect the only Jewish state in a hostile region. Yet what began as a calculated support structure has grown into something more automatic, more impulsive, and increasingly contrary to the interests of its creator. The U.S. foreign policy establishment, long a stabilizing influence, became a blunt instrument wielded for Israel’s objectives: from wars against Iraq and Syria, to strategic cover at the United Nations, to a blank check for occupation and expansion.

Now, in the spring of 2025, we are witnessing what may be the early moments of reversal. With the U.S. striking independent deals with Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia—all without Israeli consent—and with even right-wing American populists turning against Israel’s demands, the golem is no longer responding as programmed. It is beginning to think for itself. This essay examines how that came to be.

I. Secular Zionism and the Strategic Bet

The modern state of Israel was not born from biblical literalism or rabbinic prophecy but from the politics of European nationalism and socialism. The founders of the Zionist movement—Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann—were secular men, deeply influenced by Enlightenment liberalism, socialism, and colonial statecraft. Ben-Gurion envisioned a Jewish state without a synagogue: a militarized agrarian society, not a theocracy.

In 1948, when the state of Israel declared independence, it did so with weapons secretly funneled from Czechoslovakia under Soviet auspices. The USSR was among the first countries to recognize Israel, not for religious reasons, but to displace British imperial influence. Meanwhile, key Zionist paramilitaries—the Irgun, Haganah, and Lehi—waged a terror campaign to force the British out of Palestine. The 1946 King David Hotel bombing, which killed 91 people, was orchestrated by Irgun under the leadership of Menachem Begin. In 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre helped spark the Palestinian exodus known as the Nakba, when over 700,000 Arabs were displaced.

The United States initially regarded Israel with ambivalence. While Harry Truman recognized the new state within hours, U.S. strategic and intelligence officials worried about alienating Arab allies and encouraging Soviet expansion. Dwight Eisenhower even forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 after the Suez Crisis, and John F. Kennedy demanded inspections of the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona. The alliance remained shallow, conditional, and strategic—until 1967.

II. The Six-Day War and the Strategic Realignment

The Six-Day War in June 1967 was the turning point. Israel’s lightning defeat of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria—seizing the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights—reshaped not only the geography of the Middle East, but the structure of U.S. foreign policy.

In Washington, Israel suddenly appeared as a reliable pro-Western outpost capable of holding the line against Soviet-aligned Arab regimes. Arms sales increased exponentially. Aid to Israel quadrupled between 1967 and 1973. The Nixon administration’s Operation Nickel Grass—a massive U.S. airlift during the Yom Kippur War in 1973—demonstrated that America would risk global energy markets and confrontation with the USSR to defend Israel.

From that moment forward, the United States functioned as the protector, financier, and enabler of Israeli regional dominance. The golem had been animated: American vetoes at the United Nations, annual multi-billion-dollar military assistance, and carte blanche for Israeli operations became normalized. But as U.S. support deepened, Israel changed.

III. The Rise of Likud and the Settler State

In 1977, the Labor Zionist consensus collapsed. The ascension of Menachem Begin’s Likud party, born from the paramilitary underground, brought a new political ideology to the fore: revisionist Zionism. Begin, a former Irgun commander, viewed Eretz Yisrael (the entire Biblical land of Israel) as non-negotiable. The peace with Egypt in 1979—traded for Sinai—was an anomaly. What followed was an era of systematic settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

This ideology was increasingly fused with religious nationalism. The rise of Gush Emunim, backed by the National Religious Party, infused messianic fervor into Israeli politics. Settlements were no longer strategic buffers—they were divine mandates. Successive Likud governments cultivated this base. By the 2000s, hundreds of thousands of settlers were living illegally on Palestinian land.

Washington tolerated all of it. The U.S. continued supplying aid and weapons, vetoing Security Council resolutions, and blocking international accountability—even when American law (like the Leahy Law) would prohibit aid to units committing human rights abuses.

IV. From Ally to Client: Espionage, Nukes, and Double Standards

As U.S. support expanded, Israel engaged in increasingly brazen actions against its patron. The USS Liberty incident in 1967—in which Israeli forces killed 34 American sailors during an unprovoked attack on a clearly marked U.S. intelligence vessel—was swiftly buried. Survivors were silenced. No accountability followed.

In 1985, Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, was arrested for passing highly classified information to Israel. The theft was so severe that senior Pentagon officials demanded a total cut in intelligence sharing. Yet after initial diplomatic outrage, the affair was quietly swept aside. In 2020, Pollard was welcomed as a hero in Israel.

Israel also acquired nuclear weapons in defiance of U.S. non-proliferation policy. Despite warnings from Kennedy and Johnson, Israel constructed warheads at Dimona and adopted a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” By the 1990s, Israel was believed to possess up to 200 nuclear warheads, with no IAEA inspections, no NPT membership, and the Samson Option as implicit doctrine: If Israel is destroyed, it will take its enemies with it.

No sanctions. No arms embargo. Only protection.

V. The Collapse of Oslo and the Death of Two-State Illusions

In 1993, the Oslo Accords offered a fleeting glimpse of peace. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, under the watchful eye of Bill Clinton, agreed to mutual recognition and phased statehood. Rabin, a former general, told the Knesset: “We must fight terror as if there’s no peace process, and pursue peace as if there’s no terror.”

But Rabin’s vision died with him. In 1995, he was assassinated by a Jewish extremist—Yigal Amir—who believed giving land to Palestinians was a sin against God. Oslo collapsed. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud returned to power in 1996, campaigning against the very idea of Palestinian statehood.

From that moment, settlement construction soared, the separation wall was built, and Gaza was placed under siege. The “peace process” became a diplomatic fiction—a fig leaf for annexation.

And still, the U.S. continued to fund it all.

VI. AIPAC, Anti-BDS Laws, and the Evangelical Machine

Back in America, AIPAC had become the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington. By the 2010s, it had perfected the formula: bipartisan funding, primary threats to dissenters, and iron discipline on Capitol Hill. Even progressive critics like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib faced official censure and threats of expulsion.

More than 30 U.S. states passed anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) laws, forcing contractors and public employees to pledge not to boycott Israel—or be fired. Constitutional challenges followed, but the machinery held.

Meanwhile, American evangelicals became Israel’s most fervent supporters. John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) claimed over 10 million members, held annual Washington summits, and funneled millions to Israeli settlements and causes. The move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 was widely seen as a gift to this constituency.

By 2020, Israeli policy had become a theological imperative to a third of the U.S. electorate. The golem had acquired divine authority.

VII. October 7, 2023 and the Fracture of Consensus

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing over 1,200 civilians and taking hostages. The shock was immediate—and the response devastating.

Israel’s invasion of Gaza began within days. By early 2024, over 30,000 Palestinians were dead, tens of thousands wounded, and Gaza’s infrastructure obliterated. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused Israel of indiscriminate bombing, collective punishment, and potential war crimes.

The Biden administration supplied munitions and issued platitudes about restraint. But the American people had changed. For the first time, mass protests erupted in U.S. cities against Israel, not just in support. TikTok and Twitter were flooded with footage of dead children, crumbled hospitals, and refugee camps turned to dust.

A Fox News poll in February 2025 showed one-third of Republicans opposed further aid to Israel. On the left, support had already collapsed. For the first time in decades, both American parties had factions opposing the alliance.

VIII. May 2025: The Golem Turns

In May 2025, the real rupture began.

1. The U.S. signed a ceasefire deal with Hamas, brokered through Qatar and Egypt, trading the release of American dual nationals for humanitarian corridors—without Israeli approval.
2. A maritime truce with the Houthis in Yemen was signed, ending attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes. The Houthis clarified: “Our ceasefire does not include Israel.” Washington did not object.
3. Talks resumed with Saudi Arabia for normalization and a U.S.–Saudi defense pact—but only if Israel halted settlement expansion and recognized Palestinian statehood in principle. Israeli officials were not included in early meetings.

Meanwhile, tensions grew between Trump and Netanyahu. The Times of Israel reported that Trump privately criticized Netanyahu’s Gaza policy as “dragging the region into chaos” and that Netanyahu viewed Trump’s outreach to Hamas as “betrayal.” While both sides denied a rift, insiders confirmed the chill.

At the same time, MAGA influencers began breaking ranks. Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and others began criticizing U.S. support for Israel as globalist entanglement. The base listened.

Conclusion: Controlling the Clay

For decades, the United States has empowered Israel with unmatched diplomatic and military force. But the golem it built—initially to protect and preserve—now threatens to act in ways that endanger its creator’s interests. When Washington invades Iraq, strikes Syria, funds occupation, and blocks international law for the sake of Israel, it is no longer serving its own people. It is carrying out the compulsions of something else.

The allegory warns us: the golem is never the master. It obeys until it does not. Then it turns.

The time has come for a reevaluation. Not because Israel is the enemy—but because it is a sovereign nation with its own goals, and because America must act like one too. We can be friends. We can be allies. But the American people must no longer be bound by theological fantasy, financial coercion, or ideological inertia.

The golem has served its purpose. Now we must reclaim control—before it moves beyond reach.