The recent massacre of Gazan Palestinians by Israeli security forces marks a new stage in the region’s history: the point at which the Israeli government has gone from being in the Likud/”revisionist” heritage, to being an Irgun government.
In the 1920s, the Zionist movement split, as the end of World War I failed to bring a Zionist state. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, an Istanbul-based journalist and activist, scorned the original Zionist vision of a paternalist colonialism, in which native Arabs would be treated like children raised up by Europeans. They will never accept us, Jabotinsky said, so we need to take the land by force, on both sides of the Jordan River, expel or subdue an Arab minority and build an “iron wall”. Ataturk’s creation of modern Turkey out of the Ottoman collapse was one inspiration; Mussolini was another.
That came to pass, and has been the de facto rationale of the state of Israel for some time. But even Jabotinsky had stopped short of claiming Jerusalem, arguing that it should be a Free City, run internationally, given the multiple claims to its sanctity. By the 1930s, even Jabotinsky was being superseded in his militancy by the Irgun, a group of young bloods, who injected into clashes between Arabs and European Jews a new element: precise, targeted terror against random Arab civilians.
The Irgun method became a key feature of the 1948 Zionist uprising, which included dozens of precise and strategic massacres of Palestinian villages, as a way of terrorising the population into departure. Post-creation, the Irgun became part of the political system, first as Herut, then Likud, their terrorist leader Menachem Begin becoming prime minister in 1977. “Both sides of the Jordan” had been abandoned, but the process of absorbing the West Bank via “settlements” began.
This process was transformed when the Soviet bloc collapsed, fundamentalism took off in the US, Israel went from being a social democracy to that of a neoliberal state, and the Israeli political class became riddled with financial corruption. The unity provided by some level of social equality disappeared as literalist Americans fleeing pogroms in Cleveland — and the anomie of US life — filled the settlements, cheek-by-jowl with ex-Soviet Republic Jews, some of whom were genuinely leaving anti-Semitic societies, others of whom were looking for land, and the cheap labour provided by an apartheid society.
As the secular socialist Zionist vision has come apart, national unity has had to be injected by concrete application — making Arabs take oaths describing Israel as a “Jewish state”, starving Arab Israeli villages of funds, demolitions and confiscations in Palestinian West Jerusalem, destroying Bedouin culture. The ultimate aim is to make Jerusalem a wholly Israeli city. As these policies raise Palestinian protest and resistance, repression becomes more violent, not as a last resort, but as a first option, a way of reproducing that threatened unity.
How much clearer could this be than having a cold-blooded massacre of 60 Palestinians, and the serious wounding of hundreds more, on the occasion of the US embassy being moved to Jerusalem? Israel is a world leader in crowd control, having spun a lucrative human containment industry out of its military control of Palestinian bodies. Had it wanted to control that protest with minimal injury it could have. Its response was an Irgun one: a precise massacre, snipers versus children. The revisionist movement was born in the period of fascism, and to that it has returned.
That is rough on the Palestinians, but of greater significance is what it says about Israel. No state that is really in control escalates its use of external violence unilaterally, without deforming its culture internally. The state terror against the Palestinians is obviously designed to achieve a total subduing of resistance, as are the periodic invasions of Gaza and Lebanon. What happens when it doesn’t, as it won’t? Fresh airstrikes? Carpet bombing? Israel’s supporters hate the apartheid government comparison, but which other government does it most resemble? What is this but Sharpeville redux?
The only difference? Apartheid South Africa was surrounded by sanctions, which ultimately persuaded business to pressure the government to make a transition. Israel is feted and celebrated across the world. For now. Zionism is a flash-frozen version of 19th-century European chauvinism; this is the century when its previous subjects take control of the planet’s future. Any state re-enacting imperialism one massacre at a time has many reasons for doing so, but rationality is not one of them.
Try telling that to people who have grown up sucking down Zionist Propaganda all their lives. I suspect their entire knowledge of Mid-East politics is derived from watching the awful movie “Exodus”.
A good film to see on this subject is “The Promise”, check it out if you get a chance.
Another event that will show some light on the power of Israel in the land of the freaks and home of the brainless is to go online and read the USS Liberty saga.
And as an aside remember that the South African apartheid regime was kept in place longer by the active support of Israel.
What this comment has to do with the article is beyond me. However, regarding the content of the article itself – Guy, I couldn’t agree more. A tragedy which future generations will study with some disbelief, as kids do today regarding Apartheid SA.
I visited South Africa a couple of years after their first democratic election. It was surprisingly normal. Some of the whites have left now but many remain and most of them are still quite prosperous. I’ve read that many young Israelis have left Israel so a single state solution there could become more likely as US enthusiasm for supporting the vindictive little state fades. I know some Palestinians and could imagine what must by now be a Palestinian majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean accepting those Israelis who are prepared to stay in a combined state. Those who don’t want that kind of state would probably find safe homes in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Ah the extreme left. Where using whatever means is necessary to keep the sort of people out of your country who happily voted in a terrorist organisation as their government (which then proceeded to never hold another election) is seen as a bad thing.
And they wonder why European and Western voters are heading right at a rate of knots.
Ah Bobby, you are truly demented, it is Israel that is the terrorist organisation.
Things Palestinians and the hard left don’t protest for.
The ability to have free and fair elections in Gaza and the West Bank.
What the hell are you talking about? You were not thrown out of your homeland by a gang of terrorists, the Palestinians were. They have been robbed, killed and had their land stolen and it continues to be stolen. Israel was established by terrorism, except that if the Israelis did it it can’t be terrorists. This is occupied territory in the West Bank, you are by the way entitled to resist occupation. I have no truck with terrorists, but there are two kinds here. One could almost think of this as genocide, but you cannot use that term where Israel is concerned. Indeed to keep the sort of people out of your country that you stole it from.
I’m not in the ‘Israel stole the land’ camp, but the Israelis are going to have to change their ways if they ever want peace with their neighbours. There was enormous good will toward them after WWII, but bullets against stones is not a good look and the world is growing weary of it.
Yet they clearly did. The historical evidence says as much. The UN granted a whopping 53% of Palestine to be the Jewish Mandate, in spite of only 47% of the population being Jewish at the time. Yet they still committed ethnic cleansing at the first possible opportunity, both before & after the UN decision. Of course, the only reason the decision got up was because Stalin saw it as a great way to get Jews out of Russia.
The mandate for Palestine included what is now Jordan. You ignore the San Remo conference where the Arab representatives made no claim on present-day Israel. The truth is that the original mandate for Palestine was supposed to be a homeland for the Jewish people. The brits were supposed to make sure that happened but gave away 78% to the Hashimites, leaving the Jews with only 22%. Rewriting history and ignoring key facts does not make your case. UN resolution 181 was rejected by the Arabs. Then 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and absorbed by Isreal. The Jews that were expelled were forced to forfeit an area of privately owned land four times the size of current Israel. Where is the apartheid? The area of the State of Israel fits 545 times into the Arab World’s area, that is roughly 0.18% of the land. By saying the UN granted 53% to be the Jewish Mandate is patently wrong. The UN is not that kind of an organisation. They make suggestions and member countries vote on those suggestions. Your view of historical facts is naive at best. Yorre comment is pure propaganda and lacks credibility.
Jordan was an independent kingdom by the time of the Mandate. Where is your evidence that Jews were expelled from Arab lands? The only place I have seen that piece of rot promulgated is in pro-Zionist propaganda pages. Otherwise known as pure, unadulterated BS designed to justify blatant land theft.
Ah, the extreme Right. Again Bobby, Israel has been the principle aggressor pretty much from day 1, yet *any* attempts at retaliation-even just protesting-by Palestinians are labelled by Zionist stooges as “terrorism”…..& any denigration of Israel’s policies are automatically labelled as “anti-Semitism” by those self-same stooges.
The mandate for Palestine happened after WWI when the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the allies. The mandate for Palestine included what is present-day Jordan. The devil is in the detail.
It is well documented that 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries in the years after Israel declared independence. Do your own research. Your rhetoric and accusations are straight from the Hamas handbook of propaganda. Arafat himself stated there is no Palestinian people, it is only a political means to destroy Israel. The head of Hamas has said the same thing.
The facts and the history is easy to find. By claiming that the only information you can find is from pro-Zionist propaganda pages is spurious at best. Try Encyclopedia Britannica if Wikipedia is not to your taste. Stop supporting Jihadist propaganda if you want to be taken seriously.
If your claims are so “well documented”, then by all means put forward your sources.
Just for starters, present day Jordan was created *before* the end of the British Mandate. Also, those allies you mentioned included Palestinians & Arabs-all of whom were promised their own nations in return for help with overthrowing the Ottoman Empire.
You claim Arafat said “there is no Palestinian people”, yet he was the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation…
Last of all, well done for mentioning Hamas, because they were largely bank-rolled by Israeli Intelligence, as a means of splitting Palestinians away from the PLO. Like most of these kinds of operations, though, this ultimately back-fired (like the US support of the Mujjahadeen in Afghanistan).
Your ignorance on the subject is overwhelming. Try investigating the San Remo Conference. It is clearly and historically a fact that the original Mandate for Palestine included Jordan. That is simply an indisputable fact.
If I could post youtube videos here I could show a recently uncovered interview with Arafat and he states it clearly that the Palestinian people were an invention.
I can direct you to a lecture by Dr. Jacques Gauthier who has devoted the last 20 years of his life to reminding the world of the historical truth of the rights granted to the Jewish People under international law, to Eretz Israel, a piece of land that is actually much larger than what the State of Israel is today.
Dr. Jacques Gauthier, a Canadian lawyer and an expert in international law, received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Geneva. His Dissertation was titled “Sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem”. He is a highly sought after speaker around the world.
It’s on youtube and is called “WHO OWNS JERUSALEM? The Case Under International Law – Dr. Jacques Gauthier”
Where is your evidence of this “heading Right at a rate of knots”, Bobby? Your beloved Dumpf lost the popular vote in 2016, & has declined in popularity since. May almost got the boot by a relatively newly installed Labour leader. Your beloved Librorts Party almost lost in 2016, & will almost certainly be wiped out at the next election. Labour also won in New Zealand. So do tell us which nations are heading Right as you claim?
Assuming you can count, check the body-count over the last few decades, mate. That should tell you who the terrorists are. Home-made rockets vs the world’s fifth largest industrial war machine. Children vs dug-in snipers. Terror indeed.
Assuming you can count. The Arab Israeli conflict has claimed less than 100,000 casualties in the last hundred years on both sides. It is one of the last deadly conflicts in history. How many dead in Sirya in the last six months?
Yes. Israeli politics is appalling, but how far can you take the Apartheid label? Is there formal separation of Jews and Arabs in everyday life?
Provision of different levels of services for Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods. Different laws for Arabs and Jews. ‘Administrative detention’ (ie imprisonment without trial) for Arabs only. Arab refugees from the Zionist terror campaigns of 1948 have no right of return to the homes that had been theirs for generations, whereas any Jewish person anywhere in the world is free to migrate to Israel (and settle in an illegal Jewish settlement on stole Palestinian land).
Go visit one of the *many* checkpoints between Israel & West Bank, as well as those on the many bypass roads that connect the dozens of illegal Jewish Settlements. Then you will get to see just how like South African Apartheid Israel’s system is.
Also, Arab Israelis, though not treated as poorly as black South Africans were, are still treated like second class citizens.
Have you been to Israel or the disputed territories? I have.
I have been to Gaza, Hebron, where the word Hebrew comes from. The so-called settlements are in Judea, where Jews come from. I have been to Bethlehem. Bethlehem was 80% Christian town before the Palestinian authority took over the administration. Today it is 85% Muslim, 15% Christian and 0%Jewish. Bethlehem is Hebrew for House of Bread. It was originally where the bakeries were for the city of Jerusalem. Bethlehem today is just a 10-minute drive from Jerusalem.
I have visited all these places. Where is the Apartheid? Jews were expelled from East Jerusalem when Jordan invaded. That is Apartide. Bethlehem has been systematically cleared of Jews and Christians, that is Apartheid.
The Arabs that identify as Palestinians are not Israeli citizens. Arab Israeli citizens? Do you mean the Jewish Arabs that are citizens of Israel? Or do you mean the Druze citizens of Israel? Maybe you are talking about the Muslim citizens of Israel? Are the Egyptian Christien Copts, that are citizens of Israel discriminated against? What about the Bahi citizens of Israel? You do know the world centre for the Bahi is in Haifa? Which Israeli citizens are you talking about? I need clarification because you ignorant generalisations don’t cut it.
TY the best article I have read so far explaining just how we have got to this latest round of the murders of innocent people