Cauldron of Animosities

Chapter 1: Hezbollah Defeats Israel
and other imperial blunders


In the New Internationalist magazine in early 2003 Desmond Tutu told us of the kind of lives Palestinians are forced to endure under the illegal occupation of their lands: "To travel only blocks in his own homeland, a grandfather waits on the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is needed to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in Israel's cities, but their luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralysing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar." Even in US President George Bush's first term he felt the sting of mild dissent from his own Cabinet considering Secretary of State Colin Powell's reaction to Sharon's early March pronouncements: "If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know if that leads us anywhere."

Solidarity with the Palestinian cause doesn't just reach from Ramallah to New York City but to southern Lebanon, where the national resistance against Israeli aggression continued past 2000 where the occupation forces only left from most of the south, contrary to mythology. The policy towards Lebanon and Palestine, articulated by Ariel Sharon in March 2002 "We must cause them losses, casualties!" "They must first be hit hard.... Only after they are beaten will we be able to hold talks." The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict has set back Israel's chances for a mutually acceptable peace settlement based on the international consensus for a two-state solution.

On the 12th of July 2006 Hezbollah initiated diversionary rocket attacks toward Israeli military positions near the coast and near the border village of Zar'it(1) and on the Israeli town of Shlomi(2). A contingent of Hezbollah fighters crossed the border into Israeli territory and attacked two Israeli armoured Humvees patrolling on the Israeli side of the Lebanon-Israel border near Zar'it, killing three, injuring two, and capturing two Israeli soldiers(3). Five more Israeli soldiers were killed later on the Lebanese side of the border during an attempt to rescue the two kidnapped soldiers. The capture was justified by Hezbollah as a legal effort to pursue a prisoner exchange to secure the release of Samir Kuntar, Nasim Nisr, Yahya Skaf whom Hezbollah claims was arrested in Israel (Israel denies this), and Ali Faratan, who is being held for unknown reasons(4).



Nasrallah explained Israel had recently broken a prisoner exchange deal, leaving violence as the only option left after Israeli duplicity won the day. Ever the diplomat Nasrallah offered a peaceful solution anyway: "No military operation will return the Israeli captured soldiers…The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade of prisoners."(5) After laying it out on the table the Israel Defense Forces began hammering Lebanon with artillery and air strikes hours before the Israeli Cabinet even met to discuss a response.

Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz said, "if the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years," while the head of Israel's Northern Command Udi Adam said, "this affair is between Israel and the state of Lebanon. Where to attack? Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate -- not just southern Lebanon, not just the line of Hezbollah posts." The Israeli Cabinet authorised "severe and harsh" retaliation on Lebanon(6). Both a pre-government decision and threat of state-terrorist attacks from Israel? Not new to the traditional victims.

The role of particular states in international affairs, within the framework of US hegemony, is not difficult to discern when the public record is rich as compared with less open societies in the Third World. The Middle-East is crucial to global geo-political policy planning for any major power, as the record demonstrates, especially for powers to control the world both by economic and military policy. After the First World War, the British replaced the Turks as the rulers of Iraq. They occupied the country, and faced, as one report says, "anti-imperialist agitation...from the start." A revolt "became widespread." The British felt it wise to put up a façade. Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, said Britain wanted an "Arab façade ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff." Just fast-forward to April 2003 Iraq, with a 25-person ruling council appointed by the American viceroy, Paul Bremer.

Actually, Lord Curzon was very honest in those days. It was an Arab façade, and then they went on, Britain would rule behind a veil of "constitutional fictions" like "buffer state"(7) and various other terms, but it would basically be an Arab façade. And that’s the way Britain ran the whole region, in fact, the whole empire. The idea is to have independent states, but always weak governments that rely on the imperial power for their survival. And they can rip off the population if they like, that’s fine. But they have to be a façade, behind which the real power rules. That’s standard imperialism. Lord Curzon was simply being a little more honest than most. The world economy was developing a need for oil to produce new technological advancements and British monopoly control of oil was logical to overcome the drain the effect of participation WW1 had on the British Empire.

Winston Churchill used the RAF to drop poison gas on the newly formed Iraq in the inter-war years as Colonial Secretary, since the Iraqis were resisting occupation based on ideas of Arab nationhood and UK loyalty to promises given in exchange for help fighting the Ottomans. He justified it saying: "I cannot understand this squeamishness about using poison gas against uncivilised tribes. It will cause a lively terror. It will save British lives." The India Office was resistant. The First World War was a turning point for the British Empire; it was weakened by the loss of resources and manpower. All across the Empire independence movements, violent and peaceful, emerged. With objections from colleagues across the imperial network, Churchill advocated using the latest weapon: air power.

Previously the European Empires decided to mask their savagery with a stunt: a treaty criminalising the use of air power indiscriminately on civilians. As the European leaders assembled to sign a treaty banning state-terrorism by the air there was only one voice of opposition, which ended the process: Britain. After the Foreign Secretary returned to London, British Prime Minister Lloyd George congratulated him in a private letter, justifying the rejection on the grounds "We have to reserve the right to bomb the niggers"(9). Something Winston Churchill began a pattern. After the relatively peaceful demonstrations in Baghdad were ended by gassing the city center, the tactic of chemical-terrorism was used regularly.

Middle-East oil is rightly mentioned as a main reason for the US invasion of Iraq and general policies in the M-E. But publicly the discourse is veiled: "The two things that were never openly discussed, that never became part of the national conversation, were oil and money," Bob Herbert revealed(8). Eisenhower articulated US priorities in the M-E and view of the importance of oil as "the most strategically important area of the world"(9).

The harsh Israeli retaliation in the first Intifada is a hallmark of history in the normal pattern of brutality meted out on Palestinians when just a few presume to fight back. Israel’s Cabinet ordered retribution on the Palestinians. When they ordered wide scale slaughter to “crush” the Palestinians in “collective punishment” in October 2000 it was no doubt done without anticipation the victims would respond in “bloody revenge”(10). The philosophy of brutal occupation and repression of resistance was articulated in the beginning by Moshe Dayan: Israel should tell the Palestinians “we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs,”(11) The ‘Arabushim’ are still “samidin” who endure but don’t react.

The second Intifada was different. The consequence of the orders to crush the Palestinians to force them “not to raise their heads” was different: they fought back. Not just against the occupiers in the West Bank and Gaza but even in Israel that had long been immune to retaliations after more than 30 years of quiet.

Concerns were echoed of 20 years ago that “Two and a half years of intense fighting against Palestinian terrorism have turned the Israeli Defense Forces into an obdurate and callous army, focused on its mission of an indifference to the consequences to its actions. The IDF, which brought up generations of soldiers on the myth of purity of arms and educated its commanders with the idea of the moral, deliberating soldier, who takes tough decisions, while thinking of humane consequences, is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.”(12). The selective vision of suffering speaks for itself and is not uncommon in imperial circles.


Chapter 2: Birth of Repression

It is casually said that Israel was ‘created’. Kind of like a hurricane: an event with no agent. With barely a mention of the details of the birth of the State of Israel. This could possibly mean that in ignorance of a nation’s founding Israeli’s patriotism is false. Such a charge is made about the Palestinians from time to time, so it’s only fair it be alleged the other way around too.

Palestinian groups such as Fatah and Hamas are denounced by the Israeli government and intellectual class as ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’. This is based on double standards, clearly. Recently this year (2006) former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most reactionary in his country’s history, participated in an anniversary celebration of the bombing of the King David Hotel, UK newspapers like The Times and the UK Ambassador to Israel expressed outrage. There the former PM said “We must make a distinction between terrorism and legitimate resistance to occupation.” Killing civilians for political purposes when resisting occupation is legitimate, outside that context it isn’t.

I note I find no record of an objection by Netanyahu on Israel voting against the UN GA Resolution 42/159 on terrorism, December 7 1987 which stated something similar to what he said: "that nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination, nor...the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and to seek and receive support [in accordance with the Charter and other principles of international law]." The Resolution passed 153-2, US and Israel opposed, Honduras alone abstaining.(U1)

To be in favour of imperialism, terrorism and torture requires a public stance of hypocracy and internalising the values of accepting such an attitude. For Netanyahu and others like him, terrorism is what others do to you. When you do it, it’s counterterrorism. Or counterinsurgency, as the SS called it in their manual which Israel, the UK and US adopted after WW2 on top of accommodating the services of Klaus Barbie (the butcher of Lyon) and other Nazi barbarians. When Palestinians kill Israeli civilians for political purposes(like resisting occupation, national independence) that’s denounced as terrorism. But when IAF planes carpet bomb Lebanese towns with cluster bombs that’s described as ‘strategic operations’.

It’s hard to find a national movement that didn’t involve terrorism, a holy grail of political science shall we say (for those who aren’t hypocrites of course!). The ‘creation’ of Israel is not unique in this respect. After the Second World War, after a respite in violence, including terrorism, the Zionist groups in the British Mandate of Palestine resumed their activities. Generally preferring ‘soft targets’, Irgun and Lehi proceeded to force out the occupiers by any means.

In 1943 PM Yitshak Shamir wrote the article Terror for the paper of Lehi, where he proposed to “dismiss all the ‘phobia’ and babble against terror with simple, obvious arguments.” “Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war,” he wrote, & “We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle.” “First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one: it demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this country, our war against the occupier.”(U2)

Once the British left and the UN Partition was rejected by the most extreme elements of Zionism: those who wanted a ‘Jewish state’, the State of Israel was ‘established’. In order for a Jewish State to be established, the policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as Milosevic was condemned for committing in Yugoslavia, was ruthlessly implemented. Terror as a tactic would not be dropped, of course. And the borders internationally agreed would not be accepted if possible, by force if necessary. The Koenig Report stated this policy even more bluntly: "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."(1)

Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, declaimed: “We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.”(2)

Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces stated: "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."(3)

Eitan elaborated before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee: "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."(4) In the same year, Ben Gurion wrote in a letter to his son: "A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. I am certain that we can not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country and the region."(5)

In 1937, he claimed: “The boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”(5) In 1938, he was more explicit: “The boundaries of Zionist aspiration,” he told the World Council of Poale Zion in Tel Aviv, “include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan [West Bank] and the Sinai.”(6)


In May of 1948 he presented his strategic aims to the General Staff. “We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria, and Sinai.”(7)

When General Yigal Allon asked Ben Gurion, “What is to be done with the population of Lydda and Ramle?” – some 50,000 inhabitants – Ben Gurion, according to his biographer, waved his hand and said, “Drive them out!”(8)

When Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu repeatedly asserted we “should not talk” about a Palestinian state unless they stop using terror as a tactic, because otherwise Israel would be “rewarding terror”. If the fellow has a mirror in his home’s bathroom perhaps he should look in it to consider not just his appearance but personal integrity?


Chapter 3: Terror and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Once Hezbollah captured the two Israeli soldiers on the 12th of July 2006, the Israeli government immediately threatened state-sponsored international terrorism against Lebanon’s population, which I mentioned earlier.

Not much different to the Israeli response to the First Intifada, when Prime Minister Shimon Peres ordered the ‘Iron Fist’ operation: indiscriminately kill Palestinians in collective punishment and terrorism for presuming to ‘raise their heads.’ “the price the inhabitants will have to pay.”- Jerusalem Post correspondent Hirsh Goodman on the Iron Fist operation.

Nor much different to the treatment Columbian villagers receive from USAF chemical-biological attacks in the so-called ‘Drug War’. There are plenty of Halabjas, mostly conducted by the leading ‘civilised’ Western powers.

The first airplane hijacking in the Middle East also falls outside the canon: it was not carried out by a small bunch of bloodthirsty Arab terrorists. Israel carried it out, introducing airliner hijacking as a phenomena. Israel's hijacking of a Syrian airways civilian jet in 1954, with the intent "to get hostages in order to obtain the release of our prisoners in Damascus," who had been captured spying in Syria (Prime Minister Moshe Sharett). Sharett accepted the "factual affirmation of the US State Department that our action was without precedent in the history of international practice." In October 1956, the Israeli air force shot down an unarmed Egyptian civilian plane, killing 16 people including four journalists, in a failed attempt to assassinate Field Marshall Abdul Hakim Amar, second to President Nasser, at a time when the two countries were not in a state of war. This was a preplanned operation.

In February 1973, Israel shot down a civilian jet over the Sinai, killing 110 people. The plane was lost in a sand storm. It was about 2 minute’s flight time away from Cairo. No confusion, no ambiguity. The orders came from the highest center of the high command. Now this was sort of noticed, there were a couple of references to this in the middle of the KAL 007 affair. Predictably, a series of lies were produced, in the New York Times and elsewhere, saying that the situation was totally different because Israel has taken responsibility and paid compensation. If you look back, you find that Israel did not take responsibility, and refused to pay compensation.

They agreed to something else, what's called ex gratia compensation, meaning just sort of pure humanitarian aid, which is easy enough because we paid for it. But they refused to pay compensation, because that would imply responsibility, and Israel refused any responsibility. In fact, what Israel did is exactly what the Russians did: they put a couple of pilots on television, and they told how what they did was exactly right and just, and they tried to blame the French pilot, he didn't know how to fly, etc.


A couple of days after that, Golda Meir came to Washington. She was asked no embarrassing questions about this; the press didn't bother. And she returned home with new military aircrafts. That's the way the US responded in that case. The US rewarded Israeli terrorism. There was also editorial comment. The New York Times, which was outraged beyond anything about the Russians, it also had something to say in this case. It had an editorial saying that "No useful purpose is served by acrimonious debate over assignment of blame". That is a phrase that echoes through time....(1)

An honest look would only generalise Thomas Jefferson's observation on the world situation of his day: "We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations."

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was a huge strike against human decency, the landscape and people. Around 20,000 Lebanese massacred and thousands kidnapped by the IDF who’ve disappeared into Israel’s shady network of secret prisons. Guantanamo Bay might be bad, but there are worse places to be held. The few who’ve emerged might be able to enlighten us once they’ve recovered. In March of 1985 in occupied Lebanon, reaching new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder," a Western diplomat familiar with the area observed, as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shelled villages, carted off the male population, killed dozens of villagers in addition to many massacred by the IDF's paramilitary associates, shelled hospitals and took patients away for "interrogation," along with numerous other atrocities.(2)

To reduce the death, destruction and prevent further such atrocities in the Middle-East Israel could lead the way to a safer region: namely by disarming of its non-conventional arsenal. In US official rhetoric, and other circles, mentioning them is against convention. But even in leading US sectors the presence of WMD in the region is destabilising to the extent of dangerous.



General Lee Butler, Commander in Chief of STRATCOM in 1992-94, observed “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle-East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles in nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so”.



The world has been so concerned about Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle-East that once assembling in New York City for one of many UN meetings, Resolution 687 was passed. It has been selectively invoked by the US and UK governments to legitamise the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. The Resolution did not provide such authority, but it did call for action on WMD towards: “the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery”(Article 14).

Article 14 was invoked by Saddam Hussein of Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, as part of an offer to withdraw alongside Israeli compliance with Resolution 242 to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Gulf War could have been avoided if the ‘rouge superpower’ accepted peace as a priority in the Mid-East, without there being any ‘crisis’ in Palestine or Kuwait to ‘deal’ with. In essence, realising he had misinterpreted instructions by his superiors in Washington, that (in the words of the US Ambassador to Iraq) “If you go into Kuwait we will treat it as an Arab matter.”, Saddam offered WMD disamanent and ending the illegal occupations of Kuwait and Palestine. A generous offer, something the 2000 Camp David proposals are towered over as probably the most magnanimous offer for a settlement of the Middle-East ever proposed.



This proposal was leaked to the press by US government officials who acknowledged these offers were “serious” & “negotiable.” How their implementation would have affected the region we won’t know, because the peace offer was “immediately dismissed” by the US government, as documented by Knut Royce of Newsday, the only journalist who was willing to cover this huge matter. One also finds that most Americans favoured a peaceful withdrawl of Iraq from Kuwait as part of a regional settlement. Two thirds, perhaps it would have been more if they knew Saddam proposed it and expressed their discontent in demonstrations such as those we saw in the approach to the 2003 March invasion of Iraq by the US and clients(3).

Literally, the US and co. were obliged to accept Saddam’s offer, signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are obliged to “good faith efforts to disarm” of their WMD. Saddam might not have realised it, but if implemented he might have made himself the most revered dictator in world history as the national leader who proposed Mid-East disarmament that lead to world disarmament. But that’s hypothetical, not unlikely considering the treatment brutal tyrants have had in Western scholarship when they served Western purposes. Kubli Khan is one, General Surharto another, the Rouge’s Gallery of Western puppet tyrants is long. Most of them installed and supported until the end of their reign by Britain and the US.


Chapter 4: War of Attrition Instead of Peace

The steps by Israel to tighten control of the West Bank and Gaza have been justified in response to Palestinian terror, with anticipation that responding with force provokes force in return(perhaps more vicious). Palestinian terrorism in resistance to the occupation by Israel escalated after more than 30 years of passivity, such as atrocities in Israel in the al-Aqsa Intifada towards late September 2000. The Intifada brought to light, among other things, internal developments of Israel that merit attention. The socio-political power of the Israeli military had reached such heights that correspondent Ben Kaspit described Israel as “not a state with an army, but an army with a state.”(1)

Kaspit’s analysis has been confirmed and extended by distinguished military correspondent Reuven Pedatzar, who discusses Israel’s “culture of power” and its “consistent choice of the military option” over peaceful solutions ever since its ‘creation’ in 1948. When analysing a book by military historian Motti Golani, Pedatzuer asserts Golani is “correct” in his “bald denial of the sacrosanct Israeli ethos according to which Israel has always aspired to peace, choosing the path of war instead.” This is because of the intervention “of the military command in the “political-diplomatic debate” sometimes even by threatening force, a resort unfamiliar in more free Western societies.

Guided by this “military culture” “Israel’s political-military leadership uses fear-mongering tactics in security issues, …generating anxiety in order to mobilise Israeli society and deflect the public’s gaze from domestic problems, such as a deteriorating economic situation or a growing unemployment rate.” This “formula”, not uncommon in other countries, including Western states, was solidified in the country’s founding by David Ben-Gurion. “fear-mongering…would be used in the following decades,” right up to today(2).

As with most military forces facing largely civilian and utterly defenseless people the Israeli Defense Forces responded to the second Intifada with extraordinary violence, in violation of Cabinet orders(most in the Cabinet had military backgrounds, obviously not a guarantee). When the leaders of military intelligence met to discuss “how many bullets the IDF fired from the start of the hostilities,” he and other leaders were staggered to discover that in the first few days into the Intifada the IDF fired 1 million bullets and other tactics. “a bullet for each child,” an officer of the high command responded in outrage.

An interesting event to note is that on one occasion a singe shot was fired into the air to make the situation clear to a European observer. This prompted two long hours of Israeli troops and tanks to fire. Aside from the waves in military assaults in the West Bank and Gaza, US bulldozers were brought in to wipe out houses, forests, olive groves, implementing policies that have made the State of Israel “synonymous with bulldozer” one reporter commented. This of course tears to shreds the fantasy of the Israeli myth of “making the desert bloom.”(3)


When from the beginning of the retribution the Israeli military used US helicopters in outright terrorist attacks in Hebron, Ramalla, East Jerusalem, etc. Bill Clinton made the biggest deal in military helicopters in a decade to Israel, October 3rd. The US press did not publish this, the same as the other example illustrated in the 1973 case: the US rewarded Israeli state-terrorism with more arms.

But Bill Clinton won’t admit to terrorism. Others will admit their participation in atrocities. “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle, and in their view we want to take away their country from them”(4) as David Ben Gurion admitted.

Israeli General Matityahu Peled is honest enough to concede deliberate exaggeration of the State of Israel’s position in the Middle-East: "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war".

In his book, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that the Israeli government is in fact responsible for the design of American policy in the Middle East, after June ’67, because of its own indecisiveness as to the future of the territories and the inconsistency in its positions since it established the background for Resolution 242 and certainly twelve years later for the Camp David agreements and the peace treaty with Egypt. According to Rabin, on June 19, 1967, President Johnson sent a letter to Prime Minister Eshkol in which he did not mention anything about withdrawal from the new territories but exactly on the same day the government resolved to return territories in exchange for peace.

After the Arab resolutions in Khartoum (9/1/67) the government altered its position but contrary to its decision of June 19, did not notify the U.S. of the alteration and the U.S. continued to support 242 in the Security Council on the basis of its earlier understanding that Israel is prepared to return territories. At that point it was already too late to change the U.S. position and Israel’s policy. From here the way was opened to peace agreements on the basis of 242 as was later agreed upon in Camp David. The book Yitzhak Rabin. Pinkas Sherut, (Ma’ariv 1979) pp. 226-227 is worth reading for those with an open mind.

Regionally Egypt has misleadingly been considered an enemy state to Israel, about to strike anytime. Even post-Nasser this viewpoint has been prominent. This is based purely on self-serving mythology. Many sources report on the growth of the armaments budget in Egypt and on intentions to give the army preference in a peace epoch budget over domestic needs for which a peace was allegedly obtained. Former Prime Minister Mamduh Salam in an interview 12/18/77 provided an alternative view to this myth, Treasury Minister Abd El Sayeh in an interview 7/25/78, and the paper Al Akhbar, 12/2/78 which clearly stressed that the military budget will receive first priority, despite the peace.

This is what former Prime Minister Mustafa Khalil has stated in his cabinet’s programmatic document which was presented to Parliament, 11/25/78. There is fortunately an English translation, ICA, FBIS, Nov. 27. 1978, pp. D 1-10. According to these sources, Egypt’s military budget increased by only 10% between fiscal 1977 and 1978, and the process still goes on, but nothing alarming as compared with Israel’s.

An article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books earlier this year(2006) alleged that the Israeli Lobby in the US somehow elbows out other lobby groups from US government access and policy formulation, in the persuit of ‘unconditional support’ for the State of Israel’s policy of rejectionism, etc. The analysis is deeply flawed. Did Saddam Hussein need a ‘lobby’ to gain WMDs and conventional arms in the 1980’s? No. Was there an Indonesian Lobby in the mid-1960’s to press the installation of General Surharto in 1965 to wipe out 500,000 landless peasants and the only mass-based political party in the country? No.

Israel does not receive unconditional support from the US either, the same as any client state. Nor does the Zionist lobby in the US Establishment have shady power that makes US politicians jump like kangaroos. I can think of two illustrations of Israel being brought to heel by the US: post-1983 invasion of Lebanon atrocities(once they became embarrassing) and Israeli arms sales to China in 2000 and 2005. The latter illustration included banning Israel’s Defense Minister from the US and demanding a written apology.

Israel will only receive general military and financial ‘aid’ as long as it serves and remains a strategic asset in the Middle-East.

Chapter 5: 1985: The Year of Terror

Western circles declared 1985 to be “The Year of Terror”, because some of the victims were no doubt Israeli, American, and so on. The United States was the host of three huge terrorist atrocities in the region in that year: 1. A car bombing outside a mosque in Beirut which massacred 80(most women and girls), wounding 250. It was timed to explode when most people left to maximize the death toll. Operated jointly by UK and US intelligence. 2. Shimon Peres’ bombing of Tunis, which killed 75 people(Tunisians and Palestinians). It was praised by US Sec. of State George Shultz but unanimously denounced by the world in the UN SC as an “act of armed aggression”. 3. Peres’ “Iron Fist” operation’s against what Israeli high command called “terrorist villagers” in Israeli-occupied Lebanon. This brought Israeli operations to new heights of “calculated brutality and arbitrary murder” according to a Western diplomat. Body counts not done as usual.

Each obviously huge examples of state-sponsored international terrorism, not casually discussed in Western media because of the implications and they’re not the only examples. Israeli naval forces raided western Lebanon’s shores to kidnap hundreds to secret them to Israeli prisons, never to face court, family or justice(1).

1985 is regarded as the major year of international terrorism in US documentation in the Mid-East, excluding the examples I just mentioned, because of two terrorist events where a single US citizen was killed in each case(2). A single. The worst of these two murders was where a disabled American-Jew called Leon Klinghoffer, was killed in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner in October 1985 by the Palestinian association led by Abu Abbas. His death “set the standard for remorselessness among terrorists,” New York Times correspondent John Burns told us without shame. He called Abbas a “has-been monster” who must face “American Justice”.

Klinghoffer’s murder is used as an example of the uncontrolled savagery of Arab terrorists to prove the attitude ‘you can’t negotiate with these kinds of people.’ This was a brutal murder, it’s not justified by the terrorists’ explanation the hijacking was in response to the bigger massacre by the US-Israeli terrorist attack on Tunis a week beforehand. But we’re not supposed to mention the bombing of Tunis, terrorism is what others do. Not ‘civilised’ Western states. Hypocrisy aside, it would have been simple to bring the “monsters” Peres and Shultz to “a day of reckoning with American Justice”. Nor unjust since they are hardly “has beens”.

A similar case received minimal respect; the UK media was neutral when they found “the flattened remains of a wheelchair” in the ruins of the Jenin refugee camp after General Sharon had the camp destroyed in 2002. “It had been utterly crushed, ironed flat as if in a cartoon,” it was described. “In the middle of the debris lay a broken white flag.” A disabled Palestinian called Kermal Zughayer “was shot dead as he tried to wheel himself up the road. The Israeli tanks must have driven over his body, because when a friend found it, one leg and both arms were missing, and the face, he said, had been ripped in two.”(3)

If it was covered by the Israeli press no doubt it was not denounced as an act of “remorselessness” by a “monster”, more likely a “man of peace” because he gets to visit the White House as a hero.

The attitude and policy of state-terrorism was articulated and justified by Boaz Evron. This was in response to an increase in settler & IDF violence to suppress Palestinians. He felt he had to defend these atrocities, rather like George Fitsu before the US civil war coming to the defense of slavery in the south. Mr. Evron wrote how Israelis must punish the “Araboushim” in Israeli slang. We “must keep them on a short leash,” he wrote. So that the Palestinians recognise “that the whip is held over their head.”

Hezbollah(2 million Lebanese in the south of Lebanon) is currently an ideological punching bag in Israel and the US. Let’s try a thought experiment: suppose Hezbollah drove out the Israeli invaders in 1983 as quickly as they did earlier this year, and occupied Israel as punishment. And it used brutal methods not unlike Israel uses against the Palestinians. And in 2002, after a dozen or so Israelis got involved in scuffles in the streets of Tel Aviv with Hezbollah occupation soldiers launched a huge ‘suppression’ campaign with tanks, bulldozers and aircraft. Leveling Haifa and the puppet-Knesset is bombed from Hezbollah planes(all equipment with ‘Made in Iran’ stamps) because it presumed to pass a resolution condemning the operation. All to make it clear to the subversive Yids that “the whip is held over their head”.

For hypocrites only an anti-Arab racist would object, and the discovery of the body of a Jewish cripple that appears to have been crushed by a Hezbollah tank doesn’t get mentioned in the Hezbollah press. Or if it does Nasrallah explains publicly “Jew talks tough, Jew get’s crushed.” And the Iranian President is asked what he thought of Nasrallah, he replies “He’s a man of peace.” No doubt there would be international outrage expressed, not much different to the real-world events, not much different to what I just hypothesised, only names, etc, are different.

In order to reduce the violence and achieve security, something Israeli politicians love to assert is their goal, implementing the international consensus of a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, Israeli full withdrawl(including the illegal settlers), is the only realistic solution at the moment. Michael Ignatieff, a prominent US imperialist, agrees and writes of the necessity “to enforce a peace on the Palestinians and Israelis.”

This US imposed settlement “must, as a minimum, give the Palestinians a viable, contiguous state” and rebuild “their shattered infrastructure.” To leave “the Palestinians to face Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships is a virtual guarantee of unending Islamic wrath against the United States.” Ignatieff is a good imperialist propagandist, he knows what he’s not allowed to say. Like that there are no Israeli tanks and helicopters, they’re US tanks and helicopters with Israelis manning them. People like him are always ready to describe Hezbollah as “armed by Iran”, etc, and “proxies for the regime in Tehran” but it is inconceivable that one should apply to oneself the same standards one applies to others. That would be honesty, something to be avoided in order to save face.

But to redress the crisis here the Israeli Shabak(General Security Service) can help point to paradise. Leading this distinguished network from 1996-2000 was Ami Ayalon who observed that “those who want victory” in overcoming terrorism without addressing the legitimate grievances “want unending war”. The former leader of Israeli military intelligence from 1991-95, Uri Sagie, tells us the same thing, literally. When rampaging across the Lebanese border, Israelis won’t achieve anything with the slogan “We will teach you what is good for you. We must see things from the other perspective of the other side…Those who hope for mutual survival with the Arabs must accept a minimum respect for Arab society.” Otherwise it’s more of the same(4).


Chapter 6: Turmoil and Trials

Benny Morris is a major Israeli scholar, renowned for honest investigation and presentation of the past. He is known as one of the main sources of scholarship on the Israeli-Palestinian problem in Israeli circles. He documents intricately the cruelty of the expulsion efforts from 1948-49 or “transfers” as they were soberly called back then, of Palestinians from their homes.

Morris describes it: “the refugee problem was caused by attacks by Jewish forces on Arab villages and towns and by the inhabitants’ fear of such attacks, compounded by expulsions, atrocities, and rumours of atrocities-and by the crucial Israeli Cabinet decision in June 1948 to bar a refugee return,” leaving the Palestinians “crushed, with some 700,000 driven into exile and another 150,000 left under Israeli rule.” Mr. Morris is negative towards Israeli massacres and “ethnic cleansing”, or literally “ethnic purification” of Palestinians. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s big error a “fatal mistake,” was not having “cleansed the whole country-the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River.”(1)

Because it is Israel that is rejectionist and aggressive (eg. war of aggression in 1967, rejection of Egypt’s 1971 peace offer, constantly rejecting two-state solution since late 1970’s) the country is “on the road to catastrophe,” four former leaders of the Shin Bet intelligence service warned whom have called for a two-state settlement with the PLO which includes withdrawl of the illegal settlements and asserted the State of Israel has been “behaving disgracefully” towards Palestinians as Avraham Shalon has said, one of the four.

An early opponent of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is Orthodox scholar and scientist Yeshayahu Leibowita whom is famous for his prediction that oppressing another people would lead to serious moral degradation, internal decay and corruption. A leading legal analyst of Israel, Moshe Negbi has talked in despair of Israel’s decent to a “banana republic”. He’s not just critical of the corrupt political system but the legal system too. He explains the courts are willing to impose a six-month sentence on an interrogator who tortured a prisoner to death or a Jew convicted of murdering an Arab child, of tolerating “secret prisons” where prisoners will “disappear” as well as casual crimes destroying Israel’s governmental system and surrendering control to “thugs of the racist fundamentalist right.”(2)

Israel has gown downhill, its judicial system not excluded these eminent scholars of Israel tell us. Eldar and Zartel explain the “particularly sad harm caused by the judicial authorities.” This is in analysis of startling and blatantly racist court rulings. Like mild punishments for the savage murder of Arab children and even a court refusal to pass sentence on Jews by appeal to the saying that “you should not judge your neighbour unless you are in his place.”


Such positions have been “destroying the entire basis of the judicial system,” Eldar and Zartel write. “It is only against this background,” Pedatzur adds, that one can comprehend the decision of the occupation authority official Pliya Albek, whom, with the support of the biased courts, rejected the appeal of a Palestinian man for compensation after the border police murdered his wife. This was justified because he “only gained from his wife’s death because when she was alive he had to support her, but now he does not, and therefore the damage to him is at most zero.” Benny Morris tells us further that “the work of the military courts in the territories, and the Supreme Court which backed them, will surely go down as a dark age in the annals of Israel’s judicial system.”(3)

The West Bank is probably the most dangerous place for a Jew to live in, for obvious reasons. However many Israelis flock to the illegal settlements in the West Bank. The reasons why Israelis flock to the illegal settlements aren’t difficult to discover. Israeli journalist Amira Hass has investigated and even lived in the occupied territories. “There is a settler in every Israeli,” she’s written. “The West Bank settlement enterprise has become a means of socioeconomic advancement for many Israelis,” whom are, because of state subsidies, obtaining lovely houses that they could never afford to buy or mortgage in Israel. “For them, this is a way of dealing with the gradual destruction of the welfare state,” since the country has implemented the regressive neoliberal economic policies that have destroyed the Third World and are slowly eroding the mixed economies of the West.

The illegal settlements also tighten Israel’s control on Palestinian’s resources so “we, the Jews, can be wasteful, as if we lived in a land with abundant water,” when Palestinians lack a lot of water with restrictions imposed on them by the occupation authorities(4). When confronted about the occupation of Palestinian land, the ‘withdrawl’ from Gaza is brought up, even though IDF forces haven’t really left, regularly go in to massacre civilians and blockade the Strip turning it into the ‘world’s biggest prison.’ The ‘disengagement’ from Gaza was part of an illegal expansion of West Bank Settlements. This has never been a secret. When the plan was revealed the Finance Minister of the time, Netanyahu, said “Israel will invest tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements as it withdraws from the Gaza Strip.”



Political commentator Aluf Benn wrote that “The proximity in timing between approving the disengagement and construction plans is no coincidence,” it’s part of “completing the separation fence in the West Bank and ‘strengthening control’ over the settlement blocs.”(5)

A Jewish rabbi living in the West Bank called on the Israeli government to use their troops to kill all Palestinian males more than 13 years old in a bid to end Palestinian presence on this earth.

Extremist rabbi Yousef Falay, who dwells at the Yitzhar settlement on illegally seized Palestinian land in the northern part of the West Bank, wrote an article in a Zionist magazine under the title "Ways of War", in which he called for the killing of all Palestinian males refusing to flee their country, describing his idea as the practical way to ensure the non-existence of the Palestinian race.

"We have to make sure that no Palestinian individual remains under our occupation. If they (Palestinians) escape then it is good; but if anyone of them remains, then he should be exterminated", the fanatic rabbi added in his article.

Falay is not the first to have called for such extreme measures. Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Kach movement, called for "the transfer of Israel's Arab population to Arab (or other) lands." (As it states on the group's website). Followers of Kahane have been connected to a number of murders of Palestinians, particularly in the Hebron area in the southern West Bank. In the most well-known of such attacks, 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron were gunned down by Baruch Goldstein, a follower of Kahane, in 1994, with Israeli soldiers looking on and allowing the gunman to reload his automatic machine gun and continue killing innocent civilians. In response to that massacre, the Israeli authorities punished the Palestinian victims by taking over the Ibrahimi mosque and turning half of it into a synagogue, where Israeli settlers go to pray each week. And each year, on the anniversary of the massacre, Israeli settlers in Hebron dress up like Baruch Goldstein and parade through the streets of Hebron, firing guns in the air.

The Kach movement recognises the 'transfer' of 750,000 Palestinians that took place in 1948 in order for the State of Israel to be created on their land, but argues on their website that this 'transfer' was incomplete, and that all Palestinians must be sent away, or killed, in order for Israel to remain a 'Jewish state'. Their platform reads, "In a genuinely 'JEWISH State', how can an Arab be an equal when that State has an Independence Day celebrating his defeat. Its flag isn't that of its people. He isn't trusted to serve in the army. His cousin born in Haifa [sic] and fled during the 1948 War of Independence cannot return... yet any Jew who never lived there before is welcomed with open arms. In short, Israel is his enemy's country, not his. So how can an Arab truly be a loyal citizen in a Jewish State? Simply, they cannot, and they must go!"

The idea of extermination of Palestinians, or their 'transfer' into other countries, is not only a view held by extremists on the fringes of society. Prominent Israeli politicians have also made calls for a 'transfer', or ethnic cleansing, based on race. On September 11, 2006, an Israeli member of Parliament called explicitly for the transfer of Palestinians (who he referred to as 'Arabs') from the West Bank (which he referred to as 'Judea and Samaria', the biblical name for the region where the majority of Palestinians now live).


"We have to expel most Arabs from Judea and Samaria," Eitam said at a memorial service for Lt. Amihai Merhavia, a soldier who was killed in South Lebanon in July. "We can't deal with all these Arabs, and we can't give up the territory, because we've already seen what they do there. Some of them might have to stay under certain conditions, but most of them will have to go." Despite a law that would strip Israeli parliament members of their immunity to prosecution if they are found make explicitly racist statements, no investigation of Eitam has occurred on this matter, and there was no condemnation of his statement by the Israeli government.(6)

But all this is irrelevant, because when others do bad things it’s different. How do we know it’s different? Because we internalise the viewpoint that it’s different, therefore it’s different. The documentary record on Zionism, Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, state-terrorism and ethnic cleansing is very informative, but little reaches the minds of us in the Western states with the power and privilege to affect change. Why? The Western press, especially the press in the United States, presents a very narrow picture of events with a narrow circle of sources for ‘information’.

A uncontroversial source of analysis is British author George Orwell. Everyone’s heard and read him. Including Animal Farm. But very few of us have read the introductory essay to the book, because it was censored by the publishers. The title is Literary Censorship in England. In it he sneaks in an analysis of the press and education system. Here is what he says about the UK Press: “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban” “being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact.” “The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.”

Then onto education: “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it” “Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” “voluntarily impose upon themselves” “certain topics cannot be discussed because of 'vested interests'.” All this only generalises to any state. The press is a group of mega-corporations. Like all businesses they have a product to sell to a market. The product is audiences, the market is advertising. What spectrum of views will be allowed? Obviously generally right-wing, in accordance with business interests.

Sometimes elites do get ‘the truth’. But it’s usually ignored. In 1958, President Eisenhower complained about "the campaign of hatred against us" in the Arab world, "not by the governments but by the people," who are "on Nasser's side," supporting independent secular nationalism. The reasons for the "campaign of hatred" were outlined by the National Security Council: "In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be opposed to the realisation of the goals of Arab nationalism. They believe that the United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress."

Furthermore, the perception is understandable: "Our economic and cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close US relations with elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with the West and the status quo in their countries," blocking democracy and development.(7) Despite being told this to his face, he continued doing exactly what he was already doing.

When in service to others, sometimes one suppresses one’s conscience for the sake of maintenance of position and respectability. One only has to watch TV shows about the Mafia like The Sopranos or movies like The Godfather or think of relations between family members(even outside of stressful situations).

Peace, independence, human rights and democracy can be realised but it requires more than public pronouncements of noble intent and the odd street march. A concerted campaign on issues that relate to the day to day lives of people produces outcomes of substance. David Hume wrote a famous essay about “the implicit submission with which men resign their fate” and that “It is on opinion that all government is founded upon.” This principle extends “from the most despotic to the most free.” There can be a genuine ‘messianic mission’ for the Middle-East and in other geographical and political realms. Reliance on established institutions is not only futile but an endangerment to ourselves. To rephrase a philosopher’s famous phrase: I act, therefore I achieve.


Sources:

Chapter 1:
(1) Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (For the period from 21 January 2006 to 18 July 2006)", United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, July 21, 2006
(2) Day-by-day: Lebanon crisis - week one", BBC, July 19, 2006.
(3) Israel/Lebanon Under fire: Hizbullah’s attacks on northern Israel, Amnesty International, September 14, 2006.
(4) Press Conference with Hasan Nasrallah. UNDERSTANDING THE PRESENT CRISIS. UPC (July 12, 2006).
(5) Hizbullah leader calls for prisoner exchange. Al Bawaba (July 12, 2006).
(6) Israel authorizes 'severe' response to abductions, CNN, July 12, 2006
(7) European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, V. G. Kiernan (Fontana 1982)
(8) Herbert, New York Times, 21 April 2003
(9) Subversion as Foreign Policy, New Press 1995
(10) Marc Curtis’ Web of Deceit, Chapter 15
(11) Mehiro shel ihud, (Hebrew, Revivim 1985)
(12) Editorial, Ha’aretz, 16 March 2003.

Chapter 2:
(U1) speech/es, Noam Chomsky
(U2) article on Middle East, 1991, Noam Chomsky
(1) Al Hamishmar (Israeli newspaper), September 7, 1976.
(2) Cited by Fouzi El-Asmar and Salih Baransi during discussions with the author, October 1983.
(3) Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1983, and The New York Times, April 14, 1983.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ben Gurion, from a 1937 speech cited in his Memoirs.
(6) David Ben Gurion, Report to the World Council of Poale Zion (the forerunner of the Labor Party), Tel Aviv, 1938. Cited by Israel Shahak, Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981.
(7) Michael Bar Zohar, Ben Gurion: A Biography (New York: Delacorte, 1978).
(8) Ben Gurion, July 1948, as cited by Bar Zohar.

Chapter 3:
(1) Speech/es, Noam Chomsky
(2) The Guardian, March 6, 1985
(3) Knut Royce, Newsday, 29 August 1990; 3 January 1991






Chapter 4:
(1) Ben Kaspit, “Ten Years of the Intifada” (Hebrew), part one, Ma’ariv, 6 September 2001
(2) Reuven Pedatzuer, Ha’aretz, 12 May 2003, reviewing Motti Golani, Wars Don’t Just Happen (Hebrew, Modan, 2003).
(3) Kaspit, Ma’ariv, 6 September 2002. Doron Rosenblum, Ha’retz, 26 Sept. 2002.
(4) Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, from Simha Flapans Zionism and the Palestinians pp. 141-2

Chapter 5:
(1) Pirates and Emperors, Old and New, Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Chomsky.
(2) Crenshaw, Current History, Dec. 2001.
(3) Justin Huggler & Phil Reeves, Independent, 25 April 2002.
(4) Ami Ayalon interview by Le Monde, 22 Dec. 2001, Uri Sagie, Lights within the Fog, 1998, pp. 300ff.
Chapter 6:
(1) Benny Morris, “Revisiting the Palestinian Exedous of 1948”
(2) Moshe Negbi, Kisdom Hayinu (We have become like Sodom) (Keter, 2004)
(3) Pedatzur, Ha’aretz, 21 February 2005. Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 341.
(4) Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, 22 Sept. 2005.
(5) Aluf Benn, Ha’aretz, 11 August 2004. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (Seven Stories, 2005).
(6) IMEMC & Agencies - Monday, 18 September 2006
(7) Perceptions of the Unpeople, ZNet commentary, April 29 2006, Noam Chomsky