This sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy,

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s smart practice, honestly. It’s why there’s a Turkish lobby and Saudi lobby with outsized influence in the US as well. Knowing how one of the world’s most foremost powers works is integral to extracting concessions from them. The issue is that:

1. Israel’s only real ally is the US, so all of their focus is on maintaining support there

2. There’s a pre-founded base of evangelical nutjobs to bolster it

3. Israel is immoral as fuck

but setting that aside for a second (because I acknowledge that a lot of issues are determined by financial contributions), wouldn’t this be a very compelling reason why we should be creating a crisis against letting this campaign continue?

That would be more compelling, except when you play chicken, you have to be ready to swerve (and let everyone know you aren’t willing to stand for what you say you will), or be hit. Starting a crisis now, demanding concessions in exchange for your vote, is necessarily playing chicken.

Swerving will tell the politicians that they can ignore all of your future protests on the matter, because you’ll just swerve in the end (and that’s assuming you don’t accidentally convince the majority of people to stay until they’re hit, or swerve too late, or if the train hits the brakes too late).

And if you regard being ‘hit’ as an acceptable alternative - in this case, that’s fascism. If you’re willing to be hit rather than swerve, own up to it - but don’t you dare tapdance around it, trying to obscure the very pertinent point that being hit is, in this case, a very bad fucking end.

If you’re arguing (like I think you are…?) that we should permit our politicians to continue supporting a genocidal fascistic state simply because they can afford to contribute more to our political system than we can to buy their vote, how is that not an apathetic stance?

My point isn’t that we should permit it. My point is just that Israel is not a good ally.

Separate to that point is that fascism is not a realistic alternative, and this is one of the worst elections we’ve had with regards to fascist vs. antifascist opposition.

Biden isn’t popular and charismatic like Obama or Bill Clinton were. He’s not riding an overwhelming tide of antifascism to victory at the polls. His opponent isn’t some milquetoast corporate drone like Romney or even a neocon shithead like Bush Jr. Trump is an out-and-out fascist who tried the first autocoup in US history - and very openly talks about how much MORE of a fascist he’d love to be. What’s more, his party is behind him in lockstep.

This is literal fucking fascism we’re up against, here, now, in the next few months. “I think it’s bad that Israel manipulates our politics” takes a distant second-place to the concern of “Jesus fucking Christ, the next four years could be the end of what democracy we do have, as well as genocide and/or oppression for millions of others.”

I’ve been shouting myself hoarse about the Israel lobby for years. I still shout about it. I just am willing to work with a pro-Israeli politician like Biden to stop literal fucking fascism.

Frankly, this is a frightening way to look at american democracy, and i’ll say the same to you that i’d say to anyone else feeling this apathetic: you don’t have to accept this reality alone. We can fight against it together.

It’s not apathy. I care deeply about American democracy. But that means recognizing its flaws and weaknesses. Lobbying is a powerful tool used to great effect. There are methods that can be used to reduce this - and none of them are peddled by the GOP or Trump.

I’m sorry we butt heads so often, I really think we could both benefit if we worked together but you at least need to acknowledge that the problem isn’t impossible to overcome.

I don’t think you inherently argue in bad faith, but I think you amplify the arguments of bad faith actors who spread these kinds of arguments, because the argument of these actors appeal to the desire to keep one’s hands clean.

But there is no keeping one’s hands clean in politics. “To rule innocently is madness”, as Robespierre once said. We, as voters, all sully our hands with the actions of our representatives, both in action and inaction. When we vote for Biden, assuming he doesn’t change his position, we sully our hands with his support of the Israeli genocide. But when we fail to put Biden back into office, we sully our hands with Trump’s support for the Israeli genocide and all of the other atrocities he has in mind. There are no good choices - we must do what we can with what we have. Playing purity test or “I won’t be held hostage by the lesser evil!” is just sullying our hands with the greater evil because we don’t want to deal with reality.