The Israeli Connection

The Israeli Connection

Clive Hambidge and Soraya Boyd

Supremacists in arms
When one thinks of Israel today, one immediately thinks of a chain of inseparable  words:  impunity, immunity and deception; a bleak tableau which gives rise to an acrid blue sky laden with ideological chemtrails. No matter the attempt to quiet a synaptic leap across a neuronal cleft Israel, and the word belligerence crosses a very contused cleft, flashes the brain like a neon light infused with violence which Israel has perpetrates and continues to perpetrate. As this heavily militarised state emanates from its core hatred for all that is humane, all that is human, and all that is tender and open, it becomes the uber incineration plant of love.

Israel is not alone in this assumed “supremacist” attitude. The U.S, Israel’s partner in war crimes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has the stars and stripes draped all over death, and, all over the region over which it spreads its darkly shroud arrogantly misusing power simply because it can -overshadowed however by would-be zionist ambition for greater power. Ambition not steeped in the sacred balm of a loving Judaism but rather an uncompromisingly brutal political and diametrically opposed contender: naked  zionism. Combining Christian zionism to zionism per se is  lethal. Nonetheless non fundamentalist Christians do embrace as do Jews the respective tenets of their faith. Why? Because they love as others of other faiths love. Beware fundamentalists of all shades “Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” (Proverbs 10:12)

Institutional racism
A letter by Alan Vaughan concerns a Matthew Taylor commentary made on January 1st in the i Newspaper, rightly though unwittingly, gives us the simple answer. Vaughan writes “Matthew Taylor is right to raise alarm about faith schools “Free and faith schools are blamed for breeding social and racial segregation.” This not the preserve of UK schools, echoes of South Africa’s apartheid education system reflected in zionist segregation in schools? Well this certainly does pertain to Israel. As correctly stated Vaughan: “All students need to be taught about different religions because they exist.” Importantly, Israel must equally recognise other religions and a “humanism” that embraces all that is good instead of propagating all that is of hate, because it exists. Similarly in purveying an inherently  distorted representation of Palestinians, at the core of the Israeli education curriculum, Israel is enforcing, producing, reproducing and maintaining a process of segregation. Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli Schoolbooks – Ideology and Propanganda in Education evidences such a distortion which does create a fertile context for sowing seeds of hatred and fear of the perceived other.  It is then not surprising that “As of 2013, Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by the United Nations Human Rights Council since its creation in 2006—the Council had resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. The 45 resolutions comprised almost half (45.9%) of all country-specific resolutions passed by the Council. ” (UN)

Paul Wilkinson discusses in  his book The New Fascists Israel’s absolute intention: violence and extremism with at the time 30,000 Mossad indoctrinates spying on its own people mostly Arab Jews reflecting the realities of present apartheid and fascism that has gripped and continue to grip Israel today. Wilkinson goes on to remind us that “in 1981 a tiny extremist party, Kash, inserted a full–page advertisement in every major Israeli newspaper, advocating the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel as a ‘stage’ in the establishment of a ‘Greater Israel’ … We shall propose a law which will punish every non – Jew who has sexual relations with a Jewish woman with five years imprisonment.” Of course back in the 1980s most Israelis regarded this rightly as barmey. However as Wilkinson stated back then “no culture or political system is immune from the dangers of a fascist mentality, not even the people who have suffered from the barbarity of fascism” and this has been consistently levelled at Israel by individuals of integrity and moral conviction. It was true then and it  is now.

Law of return
Basheer Al Zoughbi captures the overall aim of the law of return “The Israeli state’s establishment hinged upon the ideology of having an absolute dominant Jewish population over the Palestinian population since the Jewish people and government would not have accepted the notion that the Jewish population would end up being a minority in their own state. The objective and the end goal of having a Jewish demographical predominance over the Palestinian population can be proved by the means and actions of deporting Palestinian people, making them refugees, internally displaced and forcibly transfer them. These means and actions were supplemented by enacting subsequent legislations i.e the law of return (1950).”    Furthermore “Israeli nationality law defines the terms by which a person can be granted citizenship of Israel. It also deals with the Right of Return for Jewish Diaspora. In general, Israel’s nationality follows as the primary mechanism through which a person may obtain citizenship, rather than nationality … It is Jus sanguinis that is a rule that a child’s citizenship is determined by its parents’ citizenship which must be of Israel. Jus soli the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship …. The law of Return grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and almost automatic Israeli citizenship upon arrival in Israel. In the 1970s the Law of Return was expanded to grant the same rights to the spouse of a Jew, the children of a Jew and their spouses, and the grandchildren of a Jew and their spouses, provided that the Jew did not practice a religion other than Judaism willingly.” (Wikipedia). There is no right of return for internally displaced Palestinians, neither is there a right of retunr for Palestinian disapora.

Israel has always been against true integration. Those practising other chosen forms of religious practices suffer discrimination and intimidation. It is an apartheid, fascist aligned state. In Israel there is no separation between religion and state. Moreover, Noam Chomsky (Fateful Triangle) posits that “The state of Israel, as the courts have determined, is not the state of the citizens. Rather, it is “the sovereign state of the Jewish people,” where “the Jewish people consist not only of the people residing in Israel but also Jews in the Diaspora.” Thus, “there is no Israeli nation apart from the Jewish people,” in this sense. Almost 1/6 of the state of Israel are not Jews.” Many powerful Jews who live in the U.S and elsewhere are zionists, who may not care to see much about the cohesion of a so-called democratic Jewish state, care more about expanding control through the territorial entity called Israel in ongoing endeavours to firm up the consolidation of a matrix of control over the region’s petroleum and gas reserves, thus securing a powerful geo-political advantage. If this were not the case, they would look to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere.

Some are more equal
As articulated by Basheer Al Zoughbi “The fact that other ethnic, religious and /or linguistic minorities continue to live in such states or other states in general must not be prejudiced by any religious imputation of such states and from an international law point of view, minority rights must be guaranteed. Article 27 in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that “In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.”

Further, Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle Chapter Four titled ‘Israel and Palestine; Historical Background’, evidences Israeli racism writ large “Despite extensive pressures to compel immigration to Israel, most, particularly from European Russia [who] now prefer immigration to the U.S. Another relevant case is that of the Ethiopian Jews (Falashas), who have been subject to savage persecution with little attempt on Israel’s part to do anything for them or to “gather them in” . They are of course Black; also, Israel had close relations with Ethiopia through much of the of the worst period of [their] persecution. For some recent comment, see Simcha Jacobovici, alleging that “for at least six years all major Jewish organizations, uncharacteristically adhering to Israel’s line on a Diaspora matter, have suppressed information about the Falashas’s plight to undertake major initiatives to save them,” in sharp contrast to Russian Jews.”

Unsurprisingly, “Israel’s status as a representative democracy has been questioned as Jewish residents of the occupied territories are allowed to vote in Israel’s elections while Arab residents are not.” Consequently and rightly so “In 2000, Nur Masalha characterized Israel’s occupation of Palestine territories as comparable to the Nazi lebensraum (living space) policy of gaining land and materials for the benefit of Germans” while “In 2009, British Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman suggested that an Israeli justification for the deaths of 1,000 Palestinians on the grounds that “500 of them were militants” represented “the reply of a Nazi”, and that the same logic could have been applied in the Warsaw Ghetto.”  In addition, George Soros remarked “I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel’s policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views.” Of course many Israeli Jews whine whilst slaughtering Palestinians: the “whole world is against us.” Israel you will do well to start treating Palestinians with a far greater degree of humanity. Palestinians have a right to challenge this protracted status-quo. Palestinians have a right to self determine as enshrined in international law. Israel stop incarcerating children in Israeli prisons. Stop using military courts to procesute juveniles. Stop  torturing them as policy, not because they have done anything wrong but because you want to destroy then psychologically or turn them into informers against their own.

Diplomacy and double speak
Against all acceptable norms of decency and common sense, “The Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs seeks to explain government policies and promote Israel in the face of what they consider negative press about Israel around the world – the current campaign is called Masbirim.” Stuff Masbirim. Does Israel think that conscionable individuals, that the whole good hearted and thinking world does not know of the treatment handed out to the children of Gaza, the strangulation of economic growth? Are we fools to think Israel is sincere in its half hearted attempts to reconcile with their legitimate Semitic neighbours? Or that Palestine had been an empty land in the early part of the 20th Century. No we are not. This myth has been brilliantly “dissembled” by Norman Finkelstein as nonsense, Ilan Pappe’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Noam Chomsky and many other realists.

The cleansing of Abu Ghosh
Other examples could have been employed, one will suffice. “The villagers of Abu Ghosh had first been expelled in 1948, but the bulk of the inhabitants “infiltrated” back home in the following months and years. In the second half of 1949, the IDF and police started to descend on Abu Ghosh in a series of more or less brutal search-and-expel operations, where they rounded up the most recent “infiltrators” and pushed them over the border into Jordan … Following one such round-up, in early 1950, the inhabitants of Abu Gosh sent off an “open letter”, to members and journalists, writing that the Israeli’s had repeatedly “”surrounded our village, and taken our women, children and old folk, and thrown them over the border and into the Desert, and many of them died in consequence, when they were shot [trying to make their way back across] the borders”. (Wikipedia) Just one example among many many other ethincally cleansed villages.

Greater Israel
The Plan that ever was. “The promised land according to Michel Chossudovsky Editor of Global Research, “The Zionist project supports the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel. Greater Israel would create a number of proxy States. It would include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.”

To justify the pursuit of the intended goal, Israel lays claim to biblical references “The Bible contains three geographical definitions of the land of Israel. The first, found in Genesis 15:18-21, seems to define the land that was given to all of the children of Abraham, including Ishmael, Zimran, Jokshan, Midian, etc. It describes a large territory, “from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”, comprising all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, as well as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Oman, Yemen, most of Turkey, and all the land east of the Nile river. The other definitions are found in Deuteronomy 11:24, Deuteronomy 1:7,Numbers 34:1-15 and, Ezekiel 47:13-20. They describe smaller territories … The definition in Numbers and Ezekiel refers to the land that was divided between the original twelve tribes of Israel after they were delivered from Egypt, and finally, the borders defined in the book of Deuteronomy are those that will be given to the children of Israel slowly throughout the years.” Only Israeli extremists and a growing religious far–right and those with a skewed political agenda use/believe these words from another age and interpretation for their own ends. However as recently pointed out by the Presbyterian Church   “Please note in using these texts that the biblical and liturgical ‘land of Israel’ is not the same as the State of Israel established in 1948, which is a contemporary nation state. The Bible contains differing descriptions of the parameters of Israel. Promises of land generally come with obligations to God for justice to be practiced with all inhabitants.” [our emphasis] Ancients tribal Israelites are not to be equated with present day Israelis.

Opportunity in extremism
Netanyahu sees opportunity in extremism “bringing down countries … that [are] being seized by Islamic extremism. It is bringing down countries, many countries. It is knocking on our door, in the north and south.” If Islamic extremism under the cloak of political Islam is knocking on many doors what of Christian fundamentalism allied to zionism? Does Israel’s own extremism not mean it can now defend and go on the offensive with a view to take control of other countries and thereby their resources? A Greater Israel, the beginning? Israel today has a cruel leader with limitless ambitions and the U.S may hold back the tide of Israel’s rise in power and territorial expansion for a while but Israel is militarily powerful. It does also have nuclear warheads. It is clearly not incidental then that Israel has submarines armed with nuclear weapons skulking the deep oceans of every major sovereign nations’ coasts including America.

Israel Belligerent Nuclear State
The “Weizmann Institute of Science” actively supported nuclear research by 1949, with Dr. Bergmann heading the chemistry division. Promising students went overseas to study nuclear engineering and physics at Israeli government expense. Israel secretly founded its own Atomic Energy Commission in 1952 and placed it under the control of the Defence Ministry. The foundations a nuclear program was beginning to develop. We find in 1996 the Israeli diplomatic persuasive lobby sought and was [rightly] refused their perceived need for nuclear weapons.”

Too little too late, in 2004 the Arab governments always on the back foot called for a “nuclear free Middle East.” The race was on. Kissinger in a “Sanitized declassified document” a “Memorandum for the President” [Nixon] said “We (Packard, Richardson, Helms, Wheeler, Kissinger) judge that the introduction of nuclear weapons into the Near East would increases the in an already dangerous situation and therefore not be in our interest.” France was complicit: Kissinger “Israel has 12 surface to air missiles delivered from France. It [Israel] has set up a production line and plans by the end of 1970 to have a total force of 24-30, ten of which are programmed for nuclear war heads.” Further, went on Kissinger: “Everyone agreed that, as a minimum, we [America] want Israel to sign the NPT (Non-proliferation Treaty). This is not because signing will make any difference in Israel’s actual nuclear programme because Israel could produce warheads clandestinely. Israelis signature would, however, give us a publicly feasible issue to raise, with the Israeli government … a way of opening the discussion. It would also publicly commit Israel not to acquire nuclear weapons”.

So we have this public relations exercise by Kissinger, for which he was famed; that would somehow contribute to stopping Israel becoming the most dangerous country in the Middle East and as one of the most duplicitous nations in the world producing nuclear weapons . Dream on. This will prove to be America’s worst “American dream.” Who in their right diplomatic mind would stop Israel from developing nuclear weapons by providing the aircraft that could deliver them? Kissinger: “the “signed” contract for the Phantom aircraft was made only because Israel agreed “not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East”, Concluding that “Everyone agreed that, in addition, we should try to get from Israel a bilateral understanding on Israel’s nuclear intentions because the NPT is not precise enough and because the phantom aircraft are potential nuclear weapons carriers”. So Israel has nuclear warheads and continues to oppress and experiment with new weapons in Gaza. Still now America defends Israel’s actions and supplies money for the carnage. Now Israel will expand and threaten, later occupy and torture. It’s what they do. They are good at “going wild”. Damningly, states the Congressional Research Service Report (CRSR) of 16th September 2010 U.S Foreign Aid to Israel reported, “Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance.” The Bush Administration unsurprisingly sanctioned an increase of 6 billion dollars in U.S military assistance to Israel in August 2007. And the Obama Administration, also unsurprisingly, responded to the Bush Neo Con reverberation by requesting $3 billion U.S in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to Israel for fiscal year of 2011.” So, add those figures in your moral mind space to this cumulative ‘conservative estimate’ given by the U.S ngo ‘If Americans Knew’ of “total direct aid to Israel [1949 to 2008] of $113. 8554 Billion, massive by any standards, as are Israeli ambitions.”

Why? Why Not
Decades of Israeli murder and mayhem began with a trade loan in 1949 of $100.000 from the US. God only knows when and how it will end. Today the billions of US taxpayers dollars that pour through the ‘aid funnel’ are used to buy arms and equipment such as caterpillar bulldozers made in the U.S; indeed a stipulation by the U.S is that Israel uses “75% of its military aid from the U.S. funnels this money to more than 1,000 U.S arms suppliers, which in turn lobby for policies that benefit them at the expense of peace in the Middle East.” Whereas all other nations receive theirs in increments, Israel remains the only nation to receive US aid in one lump sum.

According to the CRSR, by giving unconditional aid to Israel, America seeks to and “maintains … [Israel’s] qualitative military edge over potential threats, and prevent[s] a shift in the security balance of the region.” in fact that aggressive ‘military edge’ keeps Palestinians locked down in interminable suffering and the region a tinderbox. And make no mistake the ‘qualitative military edge’ is not for Israel but for The United States of America and its continued hegemonic ambitions through its proxy, Israel. However the cutting edge moves and is being sharpened and used by Israel: cuts both ways. U.S blood money was/is for “a militarized Israel that will serve the U.S. interest of controlling the Petroleum reserves of the Middle East … policy debate in elite circles takes for granted, on all sides, the goal of maintaining U.S. control over Middle East petroleum resources and the flow of petrodollars.” (Chomsky, Fateful Triangle). If we take a sordid trip down Israel’s blood soaked memory lane we find U.S Aid increasing in direct proportion to Israel’s military aggression, perceived success therefore usefulness to American interests. Israel’s continuum is vital for American control over the oil reserves of the region.

The cost to Palestine
As observed “On Monday, Arab leaders backed a proposed UN Security Council resolution placing a 2017 deadline on the creation of a Palestinian State and the end of Israel’s decade’s long illegal occupation. Israel responded by threatening immediate war with any such state”. However, “Despite persistent claims from Israel and the US that the sole barrier to peace is the refusal of Palestinians to accept a two-state solution, yet in reality, both states continually block any move towards such a solution. Israel’s 44 year-old occupation means control: control of Palestinian land, airspace, sea and territorial borders. It has also meant control over trade, natural resources, and economic potential, which have been monopolized by Israel, to the detriment of Palestine’s economy. In 2011, the Palestine National Authority produced, for the first time, a study that calculates the quantifiable cost of Israel’s continued military occupation of the Palestinian Territory. The study revealed that in 2010, Israeli occupation cost to the Palestinian economy amounted to 6.897 billion USD, a staggering 93.3% of the total Palestinian GDP that year.” No end in sight because Israel does not want any form of peace but American backed control of the entire Middle East and North Africa.

In its 2010 ‘Building a Political Firewall Against Israel’s Delegitimization’, the Tel Aviv based Reut Institute speculated that ‘the Jewish world is growing more distant from Israel’ because ‘a growing number of Jews do not have enough historical knowledge’. In terms of “historical knowledge”, Norman Finkelstein argues that “at least in the case of the US – the reverse is true: namely, that a growing section of the disproportionately liberal US Jewish public (only African-Americans have voted Democratic and self-identified as liberals in greater numbers) now knows too much about the realities of the Israeli-Palestine conflict to lend Israel its blind support. ‘A young, liberal and idealistic Jew does not want to have to defend flooding south Lebanon with four million cluster sub munitions, or firing white phosphorus shells reaching a temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit on hospitals in Gaza, anymore than he or she wants to defend the legality of Israeli settlements against the considered opinion of every member of the International Court of Justice,’” and those who fund it. Finkelstein posits “It’s just not a Jewish thing. ‘Moreover, this has practical consequences for activists: ‘If the liberal conscience of American Jews is pricked and, finally, they do the right thing, the long, dark night might yet soon end.” If not a nuclear holocaust is awaiting an already rubble strewn crucible of suffering in the Middle East and North Africa.

Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. Clive can be contacted at clive.hambidge@facilitateglobal.org

Soraya Boyd is CEO and Founder of Facilitate Global and can be contacted by email soraya.boyd@facilitateglobal.org