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EPSTEIN SAGA EXPOSES ISRAEL’S IRON GRIP ON US POWER  
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Soumaya Ghannoushi
November 20, 2025
Middle East Eye
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_ Leaks show how a foreign influence network governs the world's most
powerful nation through seduction, dependence and capture _

A protester holds a sign calling for the release of all Epstein files
outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on 12 November 2025, Saul
Loeb/AFP

 

The Epstein leaks [[link removed]]
have reopened a door many in Washington hoped would remain sealed. Not
the door of gossip - though the media is content to drown the public
in that - but the door that leads into the machinery of American
power.

These leaks do not merely reveal the fall of disgraced financier
Jeffrey Epstein. They expose an unholy triangle of money, politics and
sex, whose central thread leads to a foreign influence network that
has learned to govern the world’s most powerful nation through
seduction, dependence and capture.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is not an antisemitic
[[link removed]] delusion. It is
what the documents show, and what Washington’s behaviour confirms.
And it is what the Epstein files illuminate with violent clarity.

They show, firstly, that Epstein was never simply a brilliant fraud
who climbed from obscure maths teacher to wealthy elite. He was a
facade - the social face of an intelligence apparatus designed to
corrupt, compromise and control. 

His network was not accidental. His closest confidante, Ghislaine
Maxwell, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell
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long reported to have worked closely with Israeli
[[link removed]] intelligence. His
investments flowed into ventures led by Ehud Barak
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the former Israeli prime minister who visited him repeatedly, even
after Epstein’s conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.
Barak headed Carbyne
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an Israeli security tech firm in which Epstein quietly placed funds. 

Investigations by Drop Site
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the picture even clearer. Epstein was not just socially adjacent to
Israeli intelligence; he was operationally useful. The outlet’s
reporting shows that his Manhattan home hosted senior Israeli
intelligence officer Yoni Koren
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for extended stretches. 

It also reveals that Epstein helped broker a security agreement
between Israel and Mongolia, tried to establish a backchannel with
Russia [[link removed]] during the
Syria [[link removed]] war, and
facilitated a security deal between Israel and Cote d’Ivoire. These
were not social favours. They were state-level services.

Vice without consequences

The leaks also lay bare something even darker: the mindset of the
American elites who moved through Epstein’s world. The schedules and
emails reveal men who treated him not as a danger, nor even a pariah -
but as a peer, a gatekeeper, a magnet. 

They sought him out, from Texas boardrooms to Emirati palaces
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because he stood at the crossroads of wealth, intelligence and elite
indulgence. To be noticed by him was to be noticed by the network
behind him. To please him was to be invited into a world where
consequences evaporated.

Epstein became the public face of a quiet, sprawling intelligence
octopus. Elites did not stumble into his orbit by accident; they
pursued it. They recognised that he could offer what even the
presidency could not: immunity, access, indulgence, and the patronage
of a foreign lobby that had perfected the art of capturing nations by
feeding the appetites of their rulers.

And it was precisely this moral rot, this elite hunger for vice
without consequences, that made them easy to control.

A compromised man is a manageable man. A guilty man is an obedient
man. A man terrified of exposure cannot say no.

Epstein’s world - the island, the apartments, the flights - became a
factory of leverage, a catalogue of weakness, a marketplace of
blackmail. But Epstein was only one instrument, one tentacle.

There was also the daylight arm: the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (Aipac). If Epstein was the covert, psychological,
compromising tool of influence, Aipac was the public, financial,
legislative one. One captured the elite through their appetites; the
other captured Congress through money. One seduced; the other
purchased. Together, they formed the shadow and surface of the same
structure.

In 2024 alone, Aipac funnelled more than $53m
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candidates across both parties. These were not donations; they were
strategic acquisitions, pressure valves of compliance - signals of who
was protected and who could be destroyed.

Pressure mounting 

Yet something is shifting in the American political landscape. The
lobby’s aura of inevitability is cracking. Its power, still immense,
is beginning to overstretch.

Aipac’s annual congressional trips
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are collapsing. In 2023, a total of 24 first-term Democrats attended.
This year, only 11 out of 33 went, with seven pulling out at the last
minute after flights had been booked. Even Representative Hakeem
Jeffries, once a loyal attendee, did not go.

Other representatives are recoiling as well: Massachussetts
Congressman Seth Moulton
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returned Aipac-linked donations, while Morgan McGarvey, Valerie
Foushee and Deborah Ross announced
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they would no longer take funds from the group. 

Voters, especially young and Democratic-leaning blocs, are rejecting
candidates backed by pro-Israel lobbying groups. Polls from the Arab
American Institute
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show that such endorsements are now more likely to cost votes than
bring them.

Pressure is mounting from every direction. Broadcasters and
interviewers now challenge politicians live on air, puncturing the old
aura of untouchability. You can see it in Senator Cory Booker
squirming
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when asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war
criminal; in California Governor Gavin Newsom repeating
“interesting”
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when the subject of Aipac is broached; and in Pennsylvania Governor
Josh Shapiro being pressed
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on whether the lobby distorts American policy. 

Even Republicans like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and
Thomas Massie now attack the lobby openly, a sign that Aipac’s
once-untouchable aura is evaporating.

As one progressive Jewish commentator
[[link removed]] put it:
“They don’t fear Aipac. They fear being associated with Aipac. The
political rules of the last almost half-century are changing before
our eyes.”

Aipac has responded to all of this with a defensive video insisting
that it is “funded by Americans”
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This is not a show of confidence. It is a signal of panic.

A lobby that once inspired fear has become a liability. A badge of
strength has become a mark of weakness. The winds are shifting.

Performative democracy 

But here lies the paradox: the pro-Israel lobby’s domestic
legitimacy might be collapsing, yet its grip on foreign policy remains
intact. Influence does not disappear simply because it becomes
unpopular. Power lingers in institutions long after the public has
rejected it. 

Public opinion can shift rapidly; machinery does not. And so, even as
Democratic politicians distance themselves - as candidates refuse
donations, and voters rebel - US
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bent to Israeli priorities.

Externally, the consequences remain catastrophic. Washington’s
decisions in Iraq [[link removed]],
Lebanon, Gaza
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interests, but Israel’s strategic calculus - often at a staggering
cost to the US. 

No empire in history has subordinated its grand strategy to the
anxieties of a much smaller state - except an empire whose elites are
compromised, corrupted and controlled.

Internally, democracy has decayed. Elections are auctions.
Representatives are assets. Public opinion is shaped by media
ecosystems funded by the same networks that bankroll political
careers. 

“Democracy” has become a performance staged by a political class
whose private lives make them permanently vulnerable.

This is the true meaning of the Epstein leaks: they expose not a
single predator, but a system built on moral decay, foreign influence,
intelligence engineering and elite complicity. Epstein was not an
anomaly. He was the model.

Trump remains its clearest illustration - a man who wrapped himself in
patriotism while tethered to foreign influence and moral ruin. His
“America First” movement was theatre. The truth was always Israel
First.

And so the US confronts a question that can no longer be buried: who
governs the country - its elected officials, or the foreign network
that owns their secrets, funds their campaigns, and exploits their
corruption?

How can a nation claim sovereignty when its leaders are so easily
compromised? How can a republic claim legitimacy when its elites are
so cheaply bought? 

How can a superpower lead the world when it cannot even govern itself?
When does the US insist - not in slogans, but in action - that its
government belongs to its people, not to Tel Aviv?

_The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye._

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_Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle
East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The
Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. A
selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and
she tweets @SMGhannoushi._

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* The Epstein Files; US-Israel Policy; Aipac;
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