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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why Israel wants a state of
permanent war</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Joseph Massad
- December 30, 2021<br>
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<p>Over the last few decades, <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Israel</a>
has been threatening war against <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Iran</a>
incessantly. Theatrical performances have been staged
at the United Nations, such as in 2012, when former
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/bibi-s-cartoon-bomb-sparks-media-frenzy-1.5169143"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Netanyahu</a>
presented a <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/27/binyamin-netanyahu-cartoon-bomb-un"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">cartoonish</a>
diagram of a bomb symbolising Iran’s alleged nuclear
threat; or when, in 2018, he brandished an
amateurishly labelled <a
href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/netanyahu-accuses-iran-keeping-secret-atomic-warehouse-n914306"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Google map</a>
of an alleged Iranian nuclear site.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yigal-Allon"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">General Yigal
Allon</a> became acting prime minister in 1969
(although earlier Israeli prime ministers, including <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Ben-Gurion"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">David
Ben-Gurion</a> and <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Levi-Eshkol"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Levi Eshkol</a>,
also played major military roles). </p>
<div>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-victims-victims-metaphor-serves-no-one"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/palestine%2C%20israeli%20soldiers%2C%20afp.jpg?itok=y_1TMLOc"
alt="" moz-do-not-send="true" width="400"
height="250"></a></p>
<p>Israel-Palestine: The 'victims of victims' metaphor
serves no one</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-victims-victims-metaphor-serves-no-one"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Read More »</a>
</p>
</div>
<p>Yet it is Israel, not Iran, that has been in
possession of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">nuclear bombs</a>
since the 1960s - and it is Israel that allegedly had
<a
href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/did-israel-have-nukes-during-the-1967-war-588611"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">plans</a> to
use them during the June 1967 war, and again when it
was losing in the early days of the October <a
href="https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2002/09/16/Yom-Kippur-Israels-1973-nuclear-alert/64941032228992/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">1973 war</a>.</p>
<p>Israel had acquired the ability to make nuclear
weapons from none other than <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-back-dated-deal-with-a-toppled-french-pm-how-peres-secured-israels-nuclear-deterrent/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">France</a>,
which <a
href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2006/09/18/third-temple-s-holy-of-holies-israel-s-nuclear-weapons-pub-19301"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">conspired</a>
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.</p>
<p>In 1973, Israel reportedly loaded <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/05/archives/israel-had-13-abombs-in-1973-war-time-says.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">13 nuclear
bombs</a> 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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<h3>Ongoing persecution</h3>
<p>Many <a
href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/52b7d0e66142a40e85256dc70072b982/93dcdf1cbc3f2c6685256cf3005723f2?OpenDocument"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">western
countries</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Israeli propagandists insist that Israel is merely
'defending' itself against the aggression of those
it oppresses, colonises and invades</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">to intervene</a>
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.</p>
<p>Former US Secretary of State <a
href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d260"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">George
Marshall’s</a> 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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<h3>'Threat to international peace'</h3>
<p>A member of the US delegation to the UN <a
href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2/d210"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">observed</a>
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”. <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">The draft
memorandum</a> 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”.</p>
<p>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, <a
href="https://books.google.jo/books?id=yU8uAQAAIAAJ&q=Donald+Neff+suez&dq=Donald+Neff+suez&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">despite UN
and US condemnation</a>. Israel finally had no
choice but to withdraw and try again a decade later.</p>
<div>
<p><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/suez%20crisis%201956%20afp.jpg"
alt="A 1956 photo shows Israeli troops in Egypt’s
Sinai during the Suez crisis (AFP)"
style="margin-right: 25px;" moz-do-not-send="true"
width="427" height="247"></p>
A 1956 photo shows Israeli troops in Egypt’s Sinai
during the Suez crisis (AFP)</div>
<p>In 1967, Israel would claim that it had to invade
three Arab countries <a
href="https://www.adl.org/resources/fact-sheets/did-israel-start-the-six-day-war"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">pre-emptively</a>
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 <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/lebanon" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lebanon</a>, 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.</p>
<p>In 1973, Israel shot down a <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/2/families-may-sue-israel-for-jet-downing"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Libyan
civilian airliner</a> over the Sinai, killing all
106 people on board. Israel’s 1981 attack on a nuclear
reactor in Iraq, which was still <a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/israel-iraq-nuclear-osirak-military-b1861255.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">under
construction</a> by France, was also <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/world/israeli-and-iraqi-statements-on-raid-on-nuclear-plant.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">justified</a>
with Israel’s claim that “we were therefore forced to
defend ourselves”.</p>
<p>Over the decades, in addition to killing tens of
thousands of Arab civilians and creating millions of
Palestinian refugees, Israel displaced a <a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41858507.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A86a44175edbff82b3be7a1e8c79b1965"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">million
Egyptians</a> during the War of Attrition in the
late 1960s, and <a
href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/3bd98d5e0.pdf"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">hundreds of
thousands</a> of Lebanese people through its
invasions of Lebanon since 1978.</p>
<h3>Killing machine</h3>
<p>Under the pretext of defence, in the last few years,
Israel has periodically bombed <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/7/syria-says-israel-launched-missile-attack-on-latakia-port"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Syria</a>, <a
href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210805-israeli-aircraft-strike-sites-in-south-lebanon-as-tensions-flare"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Lebanon</a>,
and <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/29/israel-bombs-hamas-sites-in-gaza-over-fire-balloons-military"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Gaza</a>.
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.</p>
<p>Israel’s <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-bedouin-citizen-killed-netanyahu-admission-cover-up"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">racist police</a>
and legal apparatus unceasingly target <a
href="https://www.adalah.org/en/tag/index/517"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Palestinian
citizens of Israel</a>. Yet, Israeli propagandists
insist that Israel is merely “defending” itself
against the aggression of those it oppresses,
colonises, and invades. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Palestinian resistance's ability this year to
bring the state of permanent war home to Israel's
colonists was unprecedented</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Israel’s ongoing attack on the Palestinian
neighbourhood of <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-save-sheikh-jarrah-campaign"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Sheikh Jarrah</a>,
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 <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/gaza-under-attack"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">massive
Palestinian resistance</a> this past May. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Since its founding, Israel has invaded Palestine,
Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria; bombed Iraq, <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/israeli-sudanese-factory-secret-war"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Sudan</a>,
and <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/02/world/israeli-planes-attack-plo-in-tunis-killing-at-least-30-raid-legitimate-us-says.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Tunisia</a>;
taken an aggressive posture towards Iran, Libya, <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/truth-behind-israeli-propaganda-expulsion-arab-jews"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Yemen,
Morocco</a>, and <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/3/19/israel-and-the-politics-of-boycott"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Algeria</a>;
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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the
author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial
policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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