ISRAEL:
THE PERFECT COLONY

WHY DOES THE RELATIONSHIP SURVIVE EVERYTHING?

WHY “THE PERFECT COLONY”?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A note on what this list is not. It is not a claim that every author below agrees with the book’s thesis. Several of them would reject it outright. Mearsheimer and Walt would dispute the central argument; the Israeli state’s own publications are cited as primary evidence, not as endorsement. The list is the evidence base, not a coalition.

1. The Question

• Congressional Research Service, Israel: Background and U.S. Relations — the standing overview, updated regularly, written for legislators rather than advocates.
• James Bamford, Body of Secrets (2001) — contains the Liberty material from the signals-intelligence side.

2. The Perfect Colony

• Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology (1999).
• Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (2010). The book departs from both, arguing for a different category, but they are the frame it departs from.
• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020) — the Palestinian historiography, essential for what the infrastructure argument does not cover.

3. More Than an Ally

• Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) — the founding text of chokepoint strategy, still the doctrine underneath.
• Halford Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History” (1904) — the land-power counterpart, and the intellectual ancestor of the strategic-stack argument.
• Charles de Gaulle’s 1967 press conference on the Middle East, and the arms embargo that followed, in the French diplomatic record.

4. The Strategic Stack

• Congressional Research Service, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel — sections on missile defence co-production.

5. The Security Umbilical

• Matti Friedman, Spies of No Country (2019) — the origins of Israeli intelligence culture.
• Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First (2018) — the standard history of Israeli targeted killing, based on extensive Israeli-source access.

6. The Technology Stack

• Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-up Nation (2009) — read as an enthusiastic primary source for the pipeline the chapter documents rather than as analysis of it.
• Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory (2023) — the closest existing treatment of the surveillance-export thesis, and the most directly comparable book to this one.

7. Follow the Pipelines

• US Energy Information Administration country analyses for Israel, Egypt and Cyprus.
• Brenda Shaffer, Energy Politics (2009) — on the political economy of pipeline routing.

8. The Ben Gurion Canal

• Zachary Karabell, Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal (2003).
• A caution the chapter states and this list repeats: the Ben Gurion Canal is a proposal with a documented history, not a project under construction. Sources claiming otherwise should be treated sceptically.

9. The Conventional Case

• John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007), and the original 2006 London Review of Books essay. The book’s argument is not theirs, and Chapter 9 explains where it departs.
• Walter Russell Mead, “The New Israel and the Old,” Foreign Affairs (2008) — the most substantial rebuttal of the lobby thesis.
• Noam Chomsky’s critique of the lobby thesis, arguing that US support follows strategic interest rather than domestic pressure. The book’s position is closer to Chomsky’s than to Mearsheimer and Walt’s, and differs from both.
• Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide (1967) — on the history of the forgery the chapter distinguishes its argument from.

10. The Dollar and the Desert

• Barry Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar (2011) — the standard account of dollar hegemony, and the framework the chapter builds on.
• David Spiro, The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets (1999) — the documented history of the recycling arrangement.
• Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism (1972, revised 2003) — the harder-edged version of the same argument.

11. The Domestic Lock

• Walter Russell Mead, God’s Country? — on the religious dimension.
• Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel (2008) — the scholarly treatment of Christian Zionism.

12. The Legal Laboratory

• Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (2005).

13. The Pattern

• Ryan Noronha, The Dutch Coup: How Amsterdam Bought the English Crown (forthcoming) — the full treatment of the mechanism this chapter summarises.
• Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (1994) — the systemic-cycles framework, and the most rigorous academic treatment of the pattern of successive financial-imperial hegemonies.

14. The Trajectory

• Primary sources only for this chapter — see Documents.

15. The Wounds and the Alternative

• Julia Lovell, The Opium War (2011) — on the Treaty of Nanking and the century of humiliation as the frame Chinese policy invokes.
• Eswar Prasad, The Future of Money (2021) — the sober treatment of de-dollarisation prospects, and a useful corrective to the more excitable claims.

16. What Everyone Is Thinking

• Primary sources only for this chapter — see Documents.

17. The Map That Explains the Headlines

• Primary sources only for this chapter — see Documents.

18. What Gaza Began

• Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland; and for the modern scholarly treatment, Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia (2010–2012).
• Bruce Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers (2015) — on Irgun, Lehi and the pre-state period.
• Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004) — the New Historians’ foundational archival work, by an author whose political conclusions differ sharply from his own findings.
• Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) — the contested but essential counterpart.

19. What Comes Next

• Ryan Noronha, Empire Comes Home: The Colonisation of Britain — the domestic application of the same framework.
• Ryan Noronha, Gold and Suffering: Two lines. One graph. One question. — free at drryannoronha.com/goldandsuffering. The shortest statement of the method this book uses.

DOCUMENTS — READ THE RECORD

• United States Foreign Assistance to Israel — Congressional Research Service, updated periodically. The standing reference for aid totals, categories and conditions.
• Court of Inquiry record on the 1967 attack on USS Liberty — United States Navy, 1967; with the National Security Agency declassified holdings released 2003 and 2006.
• Memoranda of Understanding on US security assistance to Israel — United States Department of State, 2007 and 2016. The 2016 MOU covers $38 billion over ten years.
• Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — International Court of Justice, advisory opinion, 19 July 2024.
• Settlement population data — Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, current. Cross-referenced against the B’Tselem and Peace Now settlement databases.
• World Oil Transit Chokepoints — US Energy Information Administration, current. Volumes and trade share for Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Suez and Malacca.
• Review of Maritime Transport — UNCTAD, annual.
• Reports on the War Reserve Stockpile Allies–Israel (WRSA-I) — US Government Accountability Office and the Defense Logistics Agency, various years. Statutory basis in the annual National Defense Authorization Acts.
• Budget justifications, Israeli Cooperative Programs — US Department of Defense, annual. Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.
• Memorandum of understanding on raw-intelligence sharing with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit — National Security Agency; released from 2013 and published with supporting documents.
• Entity List addition of NSO Group and Candiru — US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, November 2021.
• Technical reports on Pegasus deployment — Citizen Lab, University of Toronto, 2016 onwards.
• Forensic Methodology Report: How to Catch NSO Group’s Pegasus — Amnesty International Security Lab, 2021.
• Natural gas production and export data — Israeli Ministry of Energy, current. Leviathan and Tamar field reporting from NewMed Energy and Chevron.
• EastMed pipeline intergovernmental agreement — Israel, Greece and Cyprus, 2020; with United States position statements, 2022.
• India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) memorandum of understanding — G20 New Delhi summit, September 2023.
• Memorandum on nuclear excavation of a Negev canal route — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1963; declassified 1993, via the Department of Energy OpenNet archive.
• Traffic and revenue statistics — Suez Canal Authority, current.
• Office of Legal Counsel memoranda on detention and interrogation — US Department of Justice, released 2004–2009.
• Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — Supreme Court of the United States, 2006.
• Boumediene v. Bush — Supreme Court of the United States, 2008.
• Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Israel — Israeli High Court of Justice, 1999 (interrogation) and 2006 (targeted killing).
• American Servicemembers’ Protection Act — United States Congress, 2002.
• Treaty texts of the Peace of Westphalia (1648); founding charter of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (1602); Bank of England Act (1694).
• World Economic Outlook database — International Monetary Fund, current.
• Long-Term Budget Outlook — US Congressional Budget Office, annual.
• Summit declarations — BRICS, Johannesburg 2023 and Kazan 2024; with expansion documentation from 2024.
• Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) — International Monetary Fund, current.
• Triennial Central Bank Survey — Bank for International Settlements, triennial.
• Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 2015; with verification reports on Iran — International Atomic Energy Agency.
• Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities — US Department of the Treasury, monthly.
• Campaign finance filings — Federal Election Commission, current; aggregated at OpenSecrets. Includes United Democracy Project filings from 2022.
• Surveys on American religious attitudes to Israel — Pew Research Center, 2023–2025.
• World Affairs survey — Gallup, annual; with surveys on American attitudes to Middle East commitments — Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
• Oil Market Report — International Energy Agency, monthly.
• South Africa v. Israel (Application of the Genocide Convention) — International Court of Justice, orders of 26 January, 28 March and 24 May 2024.
• Arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Mohammed Deif — International Criminal Court, Pre-Trial Chamber I, 21 November 2024.
• Occupied Palestinian Territory situation reports — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, current.
• Commission of Inquiry reports — UN Human Rights Council, current.
• Testimony collections from Israeli soldiers — Breaking the Silence, current.
• A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — B’Tselem, 2021.
• A Threshold Crossed — Human Rights Watch, 2021.
• Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians — Amnesty International, 2022.
• Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (the Kahan Commission report) — State of Israel, 1983. The finding that Ariel Sharon bore personal responsibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR