[News] Why Israel wants a state of permanent war
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Fri Dec 31 11:24:10 EST 2021
middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-wants-state-permanent-war-why>
Why Israel wants a state of permanent war
Joseph Massad - December 30, 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last few decades, Israel
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> has been threatening
war against Iran <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran>
incessantly. Theatrical performances have been staged at the United
Nations, such as in 2012, when former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu
<https://www.haaretz.com/bibi-s-cartoon-bomb-sparks-media-frenzy-1.5169143>
presented a cartoonish
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/27/binyamin-netanyahu-cartoon-bomb-un>
diagram of a bomb symbolising Iran’s alleged nuclear threat; or when, in
2018, he brandished an amateurishly labelled Google map
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/netanyahu-accuses-iran-keeping-secret-atomic-warehouse-n914306>
of an alleged Iranian nuclear site.
Such Israeli propaganda has been accompanied by much huffing and puffing
by the country’s military and civilian leaderships, which have been
interchangeable at least since General Yigal Allon
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yigal-Allon> became acting prime
minister in 1969 (although earlier Israeli prime ministers, including
David Ben-Gurion <https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Ben-Gurion>
and Levi Eshkol <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Levi-Eshkol>, also
played major military roles).
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-victims-victims-metaphor-serves-no-one>
Israel-Palestine: The 'victims of victims' metaphor serves no one
Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-victims-victims-metaphor-serves-no-one>
Yet it is Israel, not Iran, that has been in possession of nuclear bombs
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal>
since the 1960s - and it is Israel that allegedly had plans
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/did-israel-have-nukes-during-the-1967-war-588611>
to use them during the June 1967 war, and again when it was losing in
the early days of the October 1973 war
<https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2002/09/16/Yom-Kippur-Israels-1973-nuclear-alert/64941032228992/>.
Israel had acquired the ability to make nuclear weapons from none other
than France
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-back-dated-deal-with-a-toppled-french-pm-how-peres-secured-israels-nuclear-deterrent/>,
which conspired
<https://carnegieendowment.org/2006/09/18/third-temple-s-holy-of-holies-israel-s-nuclear-weapons-pub-19301>
with Israel in the latter’s 1956 invasion of Gaza and the Egyptian
Sinai, in return for which the Israelis demanded that France build them
a nuclear reactor at Dimona.
In 1973, Israel reportedly loaded 13 nuclear bombs
<https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/05/archives/israel-had-13-abombs-in-1973-war-time-says.html>
and was ready for them to be dropped on Egypt and Syria, had the US not
come through with an air bridge of weapons that turned the war in
Israel’s favour.
The irony of Israel, which is a nuclear menace and major aggressor in
the Middle East region, portraying itself as a victim of its neighbours
cannot be overstated. One of the most remarkable features of the
establishment of this settler-colony in 1948 was its insistence on
establishing a state of permanent war in order to expand its territory
for further zionist colonisation and to safeguard its colonists from
anti-colonial resistance.
Ongoing persecution
Many western countries
<https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/52b7d0e66142a40e85256dc70072b982/93dcdf1cbc3f2c6685256cf3005723f2?OpenDocument>
that supported the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which gave Israel its birth
certificate, claimed that in supporting Israel’s creation, they aimed to
avert war and the persecution of Jewish colonists if Palestine’s Arab
majority achieved independence in one state.
But in supporting the creation of a settler-colonial state, they
inflicted on the Middle East as a whole a state of permanent war and
ongoing persecution of Palestinians and other Arabs whose territories
Israel conquered.
To legitimise the state of permanent war, Israel sought early on to
portray its citizens as actual or potential victims of wars and
persecution inflicted by Palestinian resistance and Arab states, which
in turn necessitated Israel’s use of permanent war and persecution as
“retaliation”.
Israeli propagandists insist that Israel is merely 'defending'
itself against the aggression of those it oppresses, colonises and
invades
This was clear to Israel’s western supporters as early as 1948. The
Israeli expulsion of the Palestinian population, along with Israel’s
territorial encroachment upon their UN-designated territories, became
the casus belli for weak and ill-equipped neighbouring Arab armies to
intervene <https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars> in May of
that year to put a stop to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and
colonisation. The weakness of the Arab armies, however, was well-known
to the Americans and the Zionists.
Former US Secretary of State George Marshall’s
<https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d260>
assessment was as follows: “whole govt structure [of] Iraq is endangered
by political and economic disorders and Iraq Govt can not at this moment
afford to send more than [the] handful of troops it has already
dispatched. Egypt has suffered recently from strikes and disorders. Its
army has insufficient equipment because of its refusal of Brit[ish] aid,
and what it has is needed for police duty at home.
“Syria has neither arms nor army worthy of name and has not been able to
organize one since [the] French left three years ago. Lebanon has no
real army while Saudi Arabia has [a] small army which is barely
sufficient to keep tribes in order. Jealousies between Saudi Arabs and
Syrians on one hand and Hashemite govts of Transjordan and Iraq, prevent
Arabs from making even best use of existing forces.”
'Threat to international peace'
A member of the US delegation to the UN observed
<https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d210> on 4
May 1948 - just days before Arab armies intervened - that the Security
Council would soon be confronted with the question as to “whether Jewish
armed attack on Arab communities in Palestine is legitimate or whether
it constitutes such a threat to international peace and security as to
call for coercive measures by the Security Council”. The draft
memorandum
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=znrICgAAQBAJ&pg=PA342&dq=Cited+in+Irene+L.+Gendzier,+Dying+to+Forget:+Oil,+Power,+Palestine&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjm57fn5_v0AhVi8LsIHb3fAc8Q6AF6BAgHEAI%22%20%5Cl%20%22v=snippet&q=Jewish%20armed&f=false>
noted that if Arab armies entered Palestine this would lead Jewish
forces to claim “that their state is the object of armed aggression and…
use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed
aggression against the Arabs inside Palestine which is the cause of
[the] Arab counter-attack”.
When Israel conspired with France to invade Egypt in October 1956, it
was part of the cycle of permanent war it sought. The Israelis occupied
Gaza and the Sinai and refused to withdraw for four months, despite UN
and US condemnation
<https://books.google.jo/books?id=yU8uAQAAIAAJ&q=Donald+Neff+suez&dq=Donald+Neff+suez&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y>.
Israel finally had no choice but to withdraw and try again a decade later.
A 1956 photo shows Israeli troops in Egypt’s Sinai during the Suez
crisis (AFP)
A 1956 photo shows Israeli troops in Egypt’s Sinai during the Suez
crisis (AFP)
In 1967, Israel would claim that it had to invade three Arab countries
pre-emptively
<https://www.adl.org/resources/fact-sheets/did-israel-start-the-six-day-war>
before they attacked it, deploying the very same arguments as in 1948.
It occupied more lands and persecuted more Palestinians, Syrians, and
Egyptians. This would be followed by its unceasing war against Lebanon
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/lebanon>, which began in the
form of periodic raids in the late 1960s to outright invasions in 1978
and 1982, and more occupation and persecution of the Lebanese and
Palestinian peoples.
In 1973, Israel shot down a Libyan civilian airliner
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/2/families-may-sue-israel-for-jet-downing>
over the Sinai, killing all 106 people on board. Israel’s 1981 attack on
a nuclear reactor in Iraq, which was still under construction
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-iraq-nuclear-osirak-military-b1861255.html>
by France, was also justified
<https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/world/israeli-and-iraqi-statements-on-raid-on-nuclear-plant.html>
with Israel’s claim that “we were therefore forced to defend ourselves”.
Over the decades, in addition to killing tens of thousands of Arab
civilians and creating millions of Palestinian refugees, Israel
displaced a million Egyptians
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41858507.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A86a44175edbff82b3be7a1e8c79b1965>
during the War of Attrition in the late 1960s, and hundreds of thousands
<https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/3bd98d5e0.pdf> of Lebanese people
through its invasions of Lebanon since 1978.
Killing machine
Under the pretext of defence, in the last few years, Israel has
periodically bombed Syria
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/7/syria-says-israel-launched-missile-attack-on-latakia-port>,
Lebanon
<https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210805-israeli-aircraft-strike-sites-in-south-lebanon-as-tensions-flare>,
and Gaza
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/29/israel-bombs-hamas-sites-in-gaza-over-fire-balloons-military>.
Meanwhile, its killing machine and military persecution, along with its
colonial settlers, continue to target Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Syrians in the Golan Heights.
Israel’s racist police
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-bedouin-citizen-killed-netanyahu-admission-cover-up>
and legal apparatus unceasingly target Palestinian citizens of Israel
<https://www.adalah.org/en/tag/index/517>. Yet, Israeli propagandists
insist that Israel is merely “defending” itself against the aggression
of those it oppresses, colonises, and invades.
The Palestinian resistance's ability this year to bring the state of
permanent war home to Israel's colonists was unprecedented
Israel’s ongoing attack on the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh
Jarrah
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-save-sheikh-jarrah-campaign>,
triggered by its theft of Palestinian homes; its continued racist
persecution of Palestinian citizens of Israel; and its jailing of two
million Palestinians in Gaza triggered massive Palestinian resistance
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/gaza-under-attack> this past May.
This year, the Palestinians' ability to bring the state of permanent war
home to Israel was unprecedented, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian
confrontation and the regional military equation in major ways.
Since its founding, Israel has invaded Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon,
Egypt, and Syria; bombed Iraq, Sudan
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/israeli-sudanese-factory-secret-war>,
and Tunisia
<https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/02/world/israeli-planes-attack-plo-in-tunis-killing-at-least-30-raid-legitimate-us-says.html>;
taken an aggressive posture towards Iran, Libya, Yemen, Morocco
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/truth-behind-israeli-propaganda-expulsion-arab-jews>,
and Algeria
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/19/israel-and-the-politics-of-boycott>;
and is the only country in the region that possesses and threatens to
use nuclear weapons. Yet, Israel continues to claim unabashedly that it
is the victim.
It is clear that Israel’s pretexts and justifications for its continued
aggression and imposition of a state of permanent war on the region
still rely on the very same arguments, and aim to achieve the very same
goals, that it set for itself at the moment of its birth.
/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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