The machinery of influence

There is a particular breed of political monster that history births again and again – yet each time, the world is unprepared to recognise it. It is the leader who wields sacred scriptures as instruments of conquest and transmutes moral authority into a licence to kindle Armageddon.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the apotheosis of this archetype: a man who has meticulously constructed an architecture of devastation while casting himself as the final sentinel of civilisation; who has transformed the memory of the Holocaust into a carte blanche for present-day atrocities; who speaks of Jewish survival while orchestrating the methodical annihilation of Palestinian existence.

But Netanyahu’s genius for moral inversion extends far beyond Palestine. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is also its most Machiavellian, the chief architect of a regional order sustained by permanent instability and pre-emptive paranoia. A leader who has systematically advanced a narrative so brazenly contradicted by evidence, yet so strategically potent, that it has become the cornerstone of his foreign policy

For over two decades, he has cast Iranian nuclear development as an ever-looming apocalypse, consistently setting deadlines that pass without incident. But each failed prophecy serves a purpose: to diplomatically isolate Tehran, escalate military posturing and further entrench Israel’s claim to impunity on the global stage.

The supreme irony of Netanyahu’s campaign against a hypothetically nuclear Iran – now metastasised into an ongoing, potentially catastrophic conflict – is that it is waged by the very nation that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East. Israel possesses an estimated 80–200 nuclear warheads, maintains sophisticated delivery systems, and operates outside any international monitoring regime. A country that has spent decades perfecting the art of deliberate nuclear opacity demands absolute transparency from its neighbours.

Yet Israel, a country smaller than New Jersey, commands more influence in Washington than any of America’s Nato allies. Netanyahu has successfully convinced multiple American administrations that Iranian nuclear capability represents an existential threat to American security, despite the complete absence of evidence that Iran poses any direct threat to American territory or interests.

The mechanism of this manipulation is elegant in its simplicity: Netanyahu presents every Iranian action as evidence of anti-American intent, every Iranian capability as a threat to American interests, every Iranian diplomatic initiative as a deception designed to enable future attacks on American targets. Through this lens, Iranian regional clout becomes American vulnerability, Iranian defensive capabilities become American threats, and Iranian resistance to Israeli policies becomes American security imperatives.

If you ever attend a drawing-room debate among Pakistanis or Arabs in Dubai or LA and ask why America supports Israel, you’re likely to receive a grim little lecture on the ‘Zionist lobby’, Hollywood’s mind control, and the West’s deep-rooted Islamophobia – critiques that are not entirely without basis, but often serve as convenient stand-ins for a more uncomfortable truth: the modern world doesn’t run on victimhood, nor does it respond to indignation. Influence is built, not bestowed. It is shaped by those who show up, stay disciplined, and play the long game.

That’s how Jewish immigrants, arriving in America in waves through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, built an enduring legacy across law, academia, media and finance. They came to America with little more than prayers and potato sacks, landing on Ellis Island with names the officials could not pronounce and ambitions they dared not speak aloud. What followed was not a conquest, but a climb – taking root in foreign soil and slowly bending it in their direction. They worked tirelessly and built purposefully. Their influence isn’t the product of some shadowy cabal or conspiratorial fever dream. It is the result of deliberate, methodical, generational investment.

The American Jewish community, despite constituting just 2.4 per cent of the US population, vote at higher rates, donate more strategically and organise more effectively than virtually any other demographic group. This is not some genetic predisposition toward political activism; it is the product of historical necessity, cultural values that prioritise education and civic engagement, and tactical thinking that treats political influence as a matter of communal survival. Today, their imprint spans the spectrum – from the minds that shape policy, to the pens that shape headlines, to the wallets that shape elections. This is not accidental. It is infrastructure. And it works.

It is this ecosystem of influence built over generations, a confluence of power and narrative, that Netanyahu exploits with a cynicism as calculating as it is cruel. It enables him to elevate disputes into existential crusades, presenting the Iranian nuclear issue not as a manageable policy challenge or a regional security concern, but as a civilisational threat – a biblical confrontation between good and evil. The strategy is ingeniously manipulative; the goal simple: transform dissent into sacrilege, opposition to Israeli policy into a moral failure – even blasphemy – and create conditions in which military action appears divinely mandated; a regime change in Tehran not merely a strategic choice, but a sacred obligation.

Yet, in a bitter irony, Netanyahu’s crusade of consecrated violence has enacted a singular moral obscenity: the repurposing of historic Jewish suffering into justification for the suffering of others. This is perhaps the most grotesque betrayal of Holocaust memory imaginable: its conscription into the service of birthing new holocausts.

However, what empowers Netanyahu isn’t merely support. It is also the absence of resistance. The Muslim world has become a reliable constant in his calculus: it will speak, it will rage, but it will not act. And this is the most painful truth: marginalisation is not always imposed; it is often self-inflicted, through division, distraction, and disarray. We have not been excluded from power; we have simply failed to claim it with unity or purpose.

We’ve produced CEOs, surgeons, and scholars. We’ve achieved excellence in isolation. But as a collective, we’ve failed to translate achievement into alignment, and alignment into agency. The Pakistani diaspora, for all its numbers, remains among the loudest yet least effective forces in the Western political imagination. Across the Gulf, the Arab states form a cartel of petrochemical monarchies with enough sovereign wealth to buy most of Manhattan – yet still not a seat at the dinner table of American power.

We have mistaken access for influence, PR for policy and photo-ops for political capital. We’ve bought penthouses, golf tournaments and soccer clubs, but not a single institution of strategic consequence or serious intellectual infrastructure. There are more Muslim billionaires in Knightsbridge than Muslim voices on Capitol Hill.

The result? When Tel Aviv is hit, the West cries out in unison. When Gaza is incinerated, the world checks the weather. When Israel strikes Iran or Syria or Lebanon, op-eds frame it as pre-emptive defence. When Yemen starves under siege or Gazans suffocate in their own blood, the silence is not accidental – it is purchased, curated, and contractually maintained.

You may cry out against the genocide, loathe the apartheid wall, and rage at the quiet horror of a brazen and unlawful assault on a sovereign nation, but history is unmoved by grief or fury. It bends only to those who build – with patience, strategy and relentless intent. When Israel calls for war, American pundits oblige, American senators issue solemn nods, and American generals draft scenarios. The machinery of response is automatic, well-funded, and devastatingly effective.

And here we are, stuck in our own tragic loop – forever oppressed, forever reactive, forever late to the game. We march. We mourn. And then we meme. Ours is the politics of catharsis, not consequence. While we tweeted, they organised. While we complained, they climbed. While we cursed the system, they became the system.

For centuries, Judaism and Christianity were locked in profound theological and cultural tension. Jews were vilified, ghettoised and scapegoated across Christian Europe. The undercurrent of suspicion was deep, and often murderous. Yet the Jewish diaspora did not retreat into isolation or perpetual grievance. Instead, it mastered the art of working within hostile systems – learning their languages, understanding their institutions and, over generations, embedding itself in the very structures that once excluded it.

In many ways, this mirrors the dynamic between Islam and the West today. Suspicion, fear and cultural dissonance are real and often painfully felt by Muslim communities across Europe and North America. But history has already shown that antagonism need not be a barrier to influence.

What the Jewish experience demonstrates is that power and influence do not require perfect acceptance; they require strategic adaptation. The task is not to wait for other societies to embrace us without reservation, but to earn our place in the halls of power by understanding the rules of the game and having the discipline to play it better than anyone else.

The writer is an entrepreneur living in the United States and the United Kingdom. He can be reached at: sar@aya.yale.edu