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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Here's Clifford's reasoning (specially authorized by Truman) making the case for Truman to recognize Israel: link to shapell.org
It's the Holocaust and the Bible, and the State Department was full off anti-Semites.
The State of Israel has been a domestic matter for the USA since during and since its creation in 1948. The State Department and Diplomatic Corps oddly thought it was an international issue. Truman famously responded he had thousands of Jewish constituents but no Arab constituents.
The self-described as confused little guy, Truman is responsible for the Golem that is the state of Israel, along with Niles & Clifford & Truman's ignorant former jewish business partner, Eddie. Anybody have info on why Niles & Clifford were so fanatical in pushing Truman to recognize Israel in the face of all the experts at State & in Diplomatic Corps? Clifford even admitted later that he sometimes only pretended to convey top State Dept officials' reasoned objections to Truman, e.g., by telling them by phone he'd convey their objections to Truman, then sitting on the information so that Truman never got that input:link to docs.google.com
Thanks, Shmuel. A good read, yet I already essentially knew that when I asked the question, but I wanted to see what others think about the question. I would add that a significant part of the function of Judaism's "Next year in Jerusalem" as interpreted by Zionists, is that biblical Israel/Zion is the mother of colonial Israel. Remember the interviews of the Jewish people on the street that was captured by a YouTube video called "Where Are You From?" After giving the literal response, the Jews interviewed invariably went back to biblical Israel as their "mother country." I remember a man from NY and a woman from, I think, Iraq, particularly in this regard. Any other historical case where the mother of colonialist enterprise either has no "mother ship" or that ship is one which may have existed thousands of years ago? It's like Nazi Germans harking back to the Aryan days sans any literal Germany. That the Zionists got away with it, and that it's still heavily empowered can be attributed almost exclusively to Christian guilt and empathy for the Shoah, which is nowadays, combined with big Zionist dollars symbolized by the likes of Sheldon Adelson.
This itself leads me to the Zionist, Bibi's notion about eternal reoccurrence of hate-of-Jews-just-for-being-Jews, the justification he told all Americans for supporting Israel with a blank check. Now that's some kind of fallacious and malicious Jewish Nietzsche, eh?
What are THEY fighting for? I think that's obvious to everyone with the slightest knowledge of Palestinian history since the early 20th Century. What land configuration and power would meet their minimum needs? I don't know, but I will guess:
1 Would they take a fully sovereign state at original partition lines? Yes
2 Would they take a fully sovereign state at the green line? Very Likely
3 Would they take a fully sovereign state minus the settlements Israel tells itself will never be given up? Maybe.
4 Would they take a rump state devoid of military power over air, land and sea, left after Israel has the settlements it tells itself it would never give up? And with ROR limited to token compensation & transfer to such a rump state? No
5 Would they take a single state devoid of all discriminatory law, with full equal rights, and with ROR?
Yes
Would Israel accept any of these options? Yes, #4
Where is the mother country of colonial Israel?
When have the small elites of the world not literally got away with murder? At best only an armed revolution has ever temporarily stopped that. And those with lots of money and influence have usually slipped away to other places where they were protected for their host land's own elite's agenda. The masses just pay, and pay.
I think Max's point about the ambiguity of international law (remember the lack of "the" instead of "some" in the UN resolution placing responsibility on Israel re getting rid of the settlements?) should be well taken. History reveals way too many weasel words in well-intentioned international curbs on any given state's sovereign actions. OTOH, Hostage's ICC point should also be well-taken. Methinks, both realities display the adages, "If there's a will, there's a way," and "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
I cannot make myself deny the linkage between Israel's Zionist agenda and those of Big Oil, military merchants (military-industrial-security complex) [AKA Smedley Butler's War Is A Racket] and Big Finance, recycle of petrodollars, profiting off high oil prices--those who profit off instability, fear of chaos, etc-- the history of the Rothschilds.
Fredblogs, you're wasting your time--we here on MW already know that Israel has long been warring with the natives (with the latest free US weapons galore) because the natives don't like to be slaughtered, dispossessed, and ethnically cleansed. Please, we already know its a long on-going atrocity the Jewish Israelis, partnering with AIPAC-orchestrated and coordinated American Jews, pretending to speak for all Jewish Americans, has been committing in full view of any American willing to use the internet to see beyond the Zionist-controlled American mass media. Too bad Dick and Jane mostly use the internet for silly Facebook HS style bonding, playing online games, and looking up sports statistics.
I guess things are too far gone for this suggested solution to the I-P conflict from 1991: Solution 2 I-P conflict: A 3-way Confederated State? link to foldvary.net
Are things too far gone since 1991?
Boycott Israel on Campus --I think you are really short-sighted. Much good has also been done, both for America, and for the world, under the American flag. You cede its use. I imagine you have never talked to an American veteran or any member of his family. Get out of your cocoon. If America stands for nothing but what you attribute its flag to, what are you doing here? Go someplace where the flag of the country more stands for what you believe in. Why should only Fox News talking heads and GOP lackies be sporting American flag pins, or crossed US-Israeli flags (at the same level)?
Sure Klaus, does, Mooser. Here's an American Jew fleshing out the details: link to thejewishreporter.com
Why of course, Mooser, everybody knows moose are very vain. Must be the antlers.
Here's a very white-looking Kate Smith, singing to black children, using a quaint endearing term for them now taboo: link to youtube.com
BTW: According to Wiki, Lena Horne descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her family were a mixture of European American, Native American, and African American descent.
On the contents of Der Giftpilz:
link to docs.google.com
In Der Giftpilz , a Jewish boy is taught by a rabbi that, among other negative things about the Gentiles--as preparation for his bar mistvah. The kiddie book specifically attributes the lesson to the Talmud. And the rabbi is portrayed as a Talmud scholar.
In Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), the German children learned that Jewish children are taught "Non-Jews have been created to work and serve Jews..." --so there's some outspoken orthodox Israeli rabbis that should love that kiddie book? See article at link to nizkor.org
stopaipac, please point out something Buchanan said that makes you conclude he's a simple racist. Thanks! Is it in his newest book about the decline of American culture? If so, where there?
Did he characterize a group of folks as cradling their "bible & guns" ?
Or was that the President of the US, Obama?
Yes, Annie, the orthodox zionist rag algemeiner. com is trying to fudge the Houla incident, which the Pro-Zionist mainstream TV News media here has been using to push harsh US treatment of the Assad regime: link to algemeiner.com
Yes, Fox News yesterday was rampant with spreading the news we really got to do something drastic about the Syrian regime, the theme led by interview with that Israeli who's coming over here to get his medal from Obama (& hopefully Obama's release of Pollard), who pleaded to save the Syrian people from Assad because America always saves the horribly treated underdogs of the world and can you imagine the America allowing any other country to treat people so badly? (I felt like throwing my shoe at the interviewer because everything he said Israel has been doing for ages), followed up by Hillary stating how horrid Syria regime was and "we" won't allow this to stand, followed by film of the Russian "attack helicopters" Russia was sending Assad (they looked like fat Bell copters), from the same Russian company that we have purchased a bunch of the same helicopters from--for our Afghanistan friends, and we should cancel that contract, and Russia is deliberately interfering with our wonderful policy in the ME, etc.
Fox never mentioned the US is quiet about the rebellion in Bahrain, and have not said anything about Saudi Arabia sending troops there.
Yep, just will kick can down the road. Iranians wonder why the West expects diamonds for peanuts. Especially since P5+1 is taking place while Iran undergoes "crippling sanctions." link to cpreview.org
@ Fredblogs
"They let the Jewish refugees in even though it was hard on the natives, and gave them a safe place to live when they were under threat of genocide in their home countries, and way too long afterward, and now, when the threat is over, they should send them back to Europe, thus giving the native Palestinians their home back. After all the natives were never consulted in the first place."
Which raises the question: 45 years later, can Israel survive the occupation? link to thejerusalemfund.org
The categorical imperative sure ain't the Torah or the Talmud, let alone Zionism.
Ethics.
Sarah, I want to join Annie in wishing you well and to have some fun too.
Danaa, I have the same view re shunning. It's a practice done by groups that brook no dissent-- if you break one of their core rules, you get shunned, and there's no way you will be accepted into the fold again unless you beg forgiveness to the group and promise never to be such a person again.
Basically, haven't people like David Duke and Kevin MacDonald been shunned? And hasn't that shunning been pretty effective? And hasn't there been a pretty effective shunning of Atzmon?
I don't know, but Sarah stands indeed, on the right side of history.
No, OlegR, U R the satire. Just keep entertaining us with your self-cartooning.
You're right, American, it does boil down to lack of empathy, and the soldier is trained to have none towards whomever he is directed to fight. This point has been made obliquely, implicitly, in many classic war movies, usually where the GI finds a picture from home in the pocket of some enemy soldier he has just killed during the battle. A whole movie was devoted to this theme lately, to wit, Clint Eastwood's Letter From Home.
War propaganda intent has always been to dehumanize the opponent; a good historical example of this is Allied propaganda against baby-eating "The Hun" apropos WW1, and a factual example beyond a war poster is the lie that the WW1 German Army massacred Belgians. Hitler of course, learned this lesson well, as he writes in Mein Kampf. Nobody learned the lesson better than Goebbels.
PS: I am aware that during WW2 the racist Imperial Japanese army treated POWs
atrociously. The Germans treated Allied POWs much, much better as a whole.
Yer right, marc B, plus he's SO admirably PASSIONATE!
giladg, no, I am not an atheist. And how would you know how much knowledge I have? Thanks for sharing your assumptions about me. I wouldn't presume to know whether or not there is a God, nor what a God's attributes would be. I do believe I alone am responsible for my own actions, or omissions, including constant awareness of my thought processing that makes me act, or not act.
Many have passion. Nothing admirable about it per se. I bet you know of a few who had plenty of passion, yet you don't admire them. Yes or No?
Thanks for added info, Charles Barwin. So he's got daughter in the IDF ("fighting for the USA"), a son who is a shoo-in for West Point but won't cut his beard, and a nephew arms dealer contracted with Pentagon facing a slew of federal charges. Why he's just another ethnic American patriotic white like those "micks" Audie Murphey and Sergeant York!
Mitt's close ties to Israeli military intelligence and same re his Israeli handler women and with Bibi himself--all via Bain: Checking out "NWO Candidate Mitt Romney's Ties to Israeli Military Intelligenc" on WELL REGULATED AMERICAN MILITIAS: link to ning.it
Boteach says on Twitter that he talked with Bibi re how to get the USA to tear down Syrian regime. Why Is Shmuley Boteach Running for Congress as a Republican? Because he's (surprise) #IsraelFirst! link to thedailybeast.com via @thedailybeast
Like all the American Jews switching to support the GOP, Boteach is PEP and doesn't think Obama is doing enough for Israel. Obviously they think Mitt will do more--and why not, given Mitt's Israeli handler and close ties with Israeli military and Bibi via Bain?
giladg, is what Shumley says in the Larry King Show video linked above in this thread an example of his family values?
In the circle jerk, Larry King refereeing, Rabbi Boteach equates Jews4Jesus (& Christianity generally) with those who made soap and lampshades out of Jews--a charge against the Nazis that has long been totally discredited and sans any evidence at all. Then he equates them with blonde, blue-eyed racists; then again, with Jim Crow anti-black racists. Then he says they abrogate personal accountability/responsiblity by saying Jews4Jesus claim you can be saved by (Southern Baptist) Christian faith alone (Belief in Jesus Christ alone will get you to heaven). "Why do they regard Judaism as an inferior faith, Jews who don't believe in Jesus as inferior?" King asks him is it fair to hang the Holocaust round the neck of Christians? Botech is totally obsessed with his Grade C horror movie vision of victim Jew in a world of cartoon Goy devils. This is an American political leader?
Agree, American; further, local US cops now get Israeli training in some bigger municipalities; NYPD is an example; it even sent some guys to Israel for that purpose. The guy who ran the US airport security until recently was on cspan a few days ago--he said there was a lot of talk about using Israeli security as a model. He said he decided not to because Israel is different than the USA in that "all Israelis think alike. " I imagine he meant "all Jewish Israelis." He may be totally ignorant of the discrepancy in treatment for non-Jews? Or may have been referencing Israeli treatment of the OT? Anyway, he also may have simply meant the US has more diversity--I guess that, in turn, could mean he was thinking it's not OK here to treat people at airports the way Israel treats non-Jews, and especially Arab or Muslim Americans.
Looks to me here that the pathetic big country is the USA. Can it get more pathetic?
When Israel attacks Iran, you say?
Also, ritzl, there's big war business for US companies like Honeywell, which the annual $1.3 B military aid to Egypt involves, lots of US jobs involved too.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which also clinched the majority in recent parliamentary elections, has threatened to cancel the peace treaty with Israel by putting the issue up for a referendum and letting Egyptians decide. (IsraelNationalNews © 2012 06/09/12)
The man on the Egyptian Street gets nothing from USS military aid to Egypt. I imagine the military contender is telling them if he gets in office the spare change will go them instead of to Mubarak Family.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which also clinched the majority in recent parliamentary elections, has threatened to cancel the peace treaty with Israel by putting the issue up for a referendum and letting Egyptians decide. (IsraelNationalNews © 2012 06/09/12)
Ditto here, I greatly admire Grant and all his courageous work in behalf all Americans and humanity.
lysias, another good idea! Imagine the publicity on such an exchange! Might even wake up Dick and Jane a tad.
damn good string to attach to Pollard release, yeah, just give us Mega ID, and btw, U only gave us one box of the documents Pollard gave you--that's not a big enough dent in the 12' X 12' room full of boxes he gave you; we know you copied all of them, and you got your Jews from Russia, so we want to show the American people just what all Mr Pollard gave you to trade for some Russian Jews. Remember that was a condition of the light sentence Dershie got for your hero?
Homingpigeon, I wrote you a response but in last few days most of mine do not appear after I hit the reply button, and they are not there. A few have appeared later when I returned to the thread.
Homingpigeon, maybe because American Christians would rise up in rage? Jerusalem is, after all the home of the three Abrahamic religions. Here's where Obama was at on Jerusalem after two years in office:
"“For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics,” (Eli) Weisel wrote. “It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran. Its presence in Jewish history is overwhelming. There is no more moving prayer in Jewish history than the one expressing our yearning to return to Jerusalem. To many theologians, it IS Jewish history, to many poets, a source of inspiration. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city; it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming.”
“Most of the problems [between America and Israel] remain, but the intensity on both sides and the recriminations are gone,” Weisel added. “During our lunch, it was clear that the President does at least know that Jerusalem is the center of Jewish history, and he knows you can’t ignore 3,000 to 4,000 years of history. I believe the only way to attain peace is to put Jerusalem at the end of the negotiations, not at the beginning.”
By this summer, with the fall midterm elections looming ever larger in the calculations of the White House, the Obama administration seemed to soften some of its more controversial Mideast policy initiatives. For instance, on Jerusalem, the White House conceded that the question of the city’s status should now come at the end of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as Elie Weisel desired, rather than at the beginning, as the president originally wanted."
link to edwardklein.com
Yes, I agree, Nevada Ned, but the examples you site are a long time ago already; how about an example more recent? There is none.
Thanks, Annie. Often, in last few days, when I hit the post button, my comment does not immediately appear as it always did in the past (with notice it is subject to moderator review). Yet sometimes it does. Sometimes it appears later, sometimes not (after I go elsewhere and return, and /or reload the page. A few times I reentered the comment and later it turned up twice.
I've been making purely factual comments the last few days on MW, but many of them never turn up--anyone else experiencing this?
This recent article from the Jewish Journal indicates Mitt Romney is slightly more likely than Obama to release Pollard:
link to jewishjournal.com
The working realistic premise, of course, is, a calculation by both Obama and Mitt as to whether the big Zionist bucks that would be added to their respective campaign coffers, and the great mainstream press accolades re their "wonderful humanitarianism" and "sense of fairness" would be offset by an angry patriotic blowback, likely led by the US IT community that led the protests originally. What a sorry state we are in.
The real issue is why is that not the official policy?
Thanks Denis!
mudder, the opposing view is that Pollard only confessed to one count of leaking classified documents, which averages, they say, a 7 year sentence. He never confessed to any traitor allegations, if they were legally charged.
I'd like to ask Barney Frank, Gary Ackeman, and the other congress critters and release petitioners and letter-writers advocating free pollard on that rational and on humanitarian grounds, what they think Bib Would do if the situation was reversed.
Would Israel release a born and bred Israeli citizen who, while in the IDF, sold secret key Israeli defense documents enough to fill a big walk-in-closet to American officials?
Because 70,000 Americans petitioned Bibi N to do so, so he could go "home" to America? link to timesofisrael.com
I can't conceive of it since there is no 5th column of Israelis who are American Firsters--in every crack and crevice of Israel's government agencies influencing Israeli foreign policy.
Pollard sold that information. It mapped our entire missile defense system. And he sold it during the height of the Cold War.
The terms of Pollard's sentence and Israel's refusal to return the documents is never mentioned, even in internet media. At least, this is the first I've seen it--MRW. Do U have a source?
Check out this comparison between Leibowitz and Pollard: link to 972mag.com
Yes, all the publications you mention are parrots of AIPAC
Fredblogs thinks the UN was chartered to furnish world legal recognition of the self-declared state of Israel, accompanied by a signed UN blank check to Israel to do whatever it wants forever and no matter the cost.
Sounds like a good guess, Annie. Thanks for updating us on Abbas.
thea lobbyMore on Mitt Romney's Israeli handler--just look at the Israeli connections--scary to think Mitt may be the next POTUS--why is this stuff not in the TV news, all favorable to Obama except FOX? link to deeppoliticsforum.com
How about Obama's opponent? Chris Bollyn has stated the following--I don't have time now to check the asserted facts, but there's enough meat to weigh I have not read anywhere else:
"ROMNEY’S ISRAELI HANDLER – Orit Gadiesh, former “War Room” assistant to Ezer Weizman and Moshe Dayan, is the daughter of Israeli Brigadier General Falk Gadiesh (born Falk Gruenfeld, Berlin, 1921) and his Ukrainian-born wife. Gadiesh is chairman of the management consulting firm Bain & Company, the parent company of Bain Capital, and was the company’s managing director under CEO Mitt Romney in 1992. “She’s like a Jewish mother figure to many of the people at Bain,” ex-Bainie Dan Quinn told Fortune magazine in 1996.
Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, the largest radio station group owner in the United States. Clear Channel owns the networks which air the most popular radio talk shows, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Glenn Beck Program, The Sean Hannity Show, America Now with Andy Dean, Coast to Coast AM, The Savage Nation, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dave Ramsey Show. (Graphic: “Rush Limbaugh Spills the Beans on the Jewish Conspiracy” by Pat Healy)
Mitt Romney was a co-founder of Bain Capital along with Bill Bain, seen here. Bain was ousted in 1991 and Romney served as CEO of Bain & Company in 1991-1992. In May 1991, while Romney was CEO, Gadiesh was named chairman of the company’s Policy Committee, which set the company’s business strategy and policy. In 1992, under Romney, she became managing director. Orit Gadiesh, who has worked at Bain & Co. since 1977, became chairman of Bain & Co. in 1993.
Orit Gadiesh, born in Israel in 1951, has worked closely with Mitt Romney since at least 1991, and probably much longer since she joined Bain & Company in 1977, when she was 26. Romney appointed Gadiesh to his transition team when he became governor of Massachusetts in November 2002. Gadiesh is the daughter of Falk Gadiesh, an Israeli brigadier general and former member of the general staff who reorganized the Israeli army in the early 1950s after a stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Falk’s daughter Orit was chosen to serve in Israeli military intelligence. Her first position in the Israeli military was as assistant to Ezer Weizman, the deputy chief of staff who later became president of Israel. During the early 1970s, she worked in the war room, a bunker where Gen. Moshe Dayan was in charge. As a war room assistant to Weizman, Orit provided military leaders with documents and correspondence.
Prior to joining Bain & Company, Gadiesh served in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. Currently, she is on the board of directors of the Peres Center for Peace, an organization headed by a former chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The high-level Mossadnik Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, is also on the executive board of the Peres Center.
ROMNEY’S INTELLIGENCE CHIEF AND CAMPAIGN ADVISER – Mitt Romney named Michael Chertoff, the Israeli agent who supervised the destruction of the crucial evidence of 9/11, co-chair of his counterterrorism and intelligence advisory committee in October 2011. The 9/11 cover-up continues.
Mitt Romney attended the Mossad’s “Herzliya Conference on Israeli Security” in 2007. Romney and the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked together as consultants at the Boston Consulting Group early in their careers.
Romney’s close relationship with Orit Gadiesh and Israeli military intelligence is the real reason he is the chosen candidate of the Zionist establishment. Romney is being supported by high-level Zionists, Israeli military intelligence, and their controlled media network. This relationship between the Israeli military and Mitt Romney, a presidential candidate, should be of great concern to all Americans because this is how the Israeli military plans to drag the United States into a war with Iran."
Yeah, Skandall, they whine about 9/11 too. Who do you cry over, Baruch Goldstein?
AKA, "Is it good for the Jews?" The 98% of Americans who are not Jewish? Chopped liver, for sure. This fits right in with the most recent article Phil wrote here re Beinhart, where it's pointed out that AIPAC has its own US helicopter fleet.
YoungMassJew, your concerns don't worry the moneybag American Jews because your premise is wrong since they see anti-semitism as never deriving from anything but DNA-derived Gentile mental illness, sometimes enhanced by Gentile religion and/or culture. What they do, you see, has nothing to do at all with what Gentiles end up doing.
YoungMassJew, your POV is mirrored as fact in European history, including Russian history. Those Jews who subscribe to the negative vanity that anti-semitism has always sprung as a mental and/or religious DNA disease worthy of the DSM IV are lethally deluded if one looks beyond the moment in terms of "What's best for the Jews?" Just one example, if one looks at old European "peasant uprisings" one can't help but notice, if one is familiar with Jewish History (pogroms: "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!) as recorded and taught, that they coincide way too often. Hence, I guess, the term (the goy elite's) "scapegoat." Makes one wonder who's doing the scapegoating when one gets their full meal of both versions of world history. Which brings me to the question: What if a born and bred Israeli in the IDF sold secret documents giving away a full map of Israeli attack and defense sites (that would fill in boxes a 12' X 12' room) to American agents so America could trade that map to Iran to trade for some Americans held in Iran captivity, would the Israeli PM release that Israeli traitor-spy (to go to America as an American hero) because it might help the PM retain office?
Sammy Glick was motivated by pure materialism, by money; he judged and judged himself on those values. I notice so many reviews say this is purely secular values. In contrast, the later Duddy Krawitz, though just as ruthlessly ambitious, is reviewed as a young guy with Jewish family values, and this in the reviewers eyes, and presumably the audience eye, makes his ethics better, e.g., it has been said to justify how he treats his shiksa girlfriend, inter alia. Duddy uses the term "shicksa" and "goy" to signify a lower species of human beings. Some reviewers of both moves conflate gross material values as "secular" and "Gentile." OK, now I better go read how the NY Magazine portrays Beinart as Sammy Glick--just because he's ambitious and, to his critics, exemplifies the end justifies the means? What end? Beinart, unlike Glick, clearly has other ends beyond materialism--and those ends, concocting a reputable Zionism in the eyes of liberal American Jews (forget the World's eyes) seems more like what makes Duddy Kravitz run, than what makes Sammy Glick run. Maybe it's time for a new movie taking the audience to Beinart as the new ambitious Jew, circa 2012? The movie that includes Israel and AIPAC. Seems to me the stakes are much higher now for all Americans, not just the 2% that are Jewish. What do we get? Jews tossing fictional anti-semitic Jewish stereotypical characters (or darlings, eh?) at each other as in a food fight, the Goys outside the window ambling by, with one periodically stopping for a minute, pressing nose to the window pane out there. And the world heads for WW3, with US-Israel "special relationship" being a very key factor.
RE: "A dual loyalty joke in the White House. Not funny."
I'd rank this as the understatement of the year, to date.
What do I mean? Try out these old saws:
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
"Old wine in new bottles."
And this more recent foaming dribble from pop culture:
"I am mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore!"
52% of Israeli Jews agree African migrants are a cancer, 19% of Israeli Arabs so agree: link to timesofisrael.com
Hey, check this out--did you know that there's a giant wave of Anti-Israel feeling sweeping over the good ol' US of A? Now young Jewish Americans are getting their own BirthRight Israel indoctrination right here--don't have to travel all the way to Israel for it! link to jspace.com
Fredblogs, in case you have been asleep for many years, Iran has no nuclear weapons, and it is a member of the NNPT. It's Israel who has the nuclear weapons, about 400 at least, and it is Israel who is not a member of the NNPT and hence is never investigated. And it it's Israel with a history of first strikes, not Iran.
Looks like Israel didn't like Sandra's article pushing Divestment here: link to tampabay.com
link to tampabay.com
"ST: They are threatening to deny me entry and to deport me.
CK: Are you Jewish?"
Why is an American official asking this right off the bat of an American asking for help?
So we American tax payers now pay for our ST to work only for Jews?
Thanks, Hostage.
Hitler's justification for his program was based on preemptive action theory, although it was not known as such at the time. Basically, as a response to not being able to protect yourself until somebody directly attacks you in the most obvious way, the preemptive war justification allows you to anticipate the attack and kill it before it has gained strength. Anybody want to make an analogy with Florida's "Stand Your Ground" defense to murder? What both justifications have in common is that both demand the most minute details of the incident come into play, right along with credibility, to wit: he said, she aid, and who, if any are the credible witnesses. In a world of power where narrative is all about what actually "went down, " all I see is endless cowboy conflict on the street. Those lacking power or influence just pay for it all in both blood and treasure; the elite waltz off behind their privately gated and secured homes. Perhaps it's never really been any different?
In the insider geek world Twitter is known as the one big social engine defending freedom of the internet and privacy rights of users. Here's the wiki profile of its creator: link to en.wikipedia.org
Notice anything when compared to the creators/owners of Facebook and Google?
Google's notice mentions its alerts to users will be as to attackers from "China, Russia and several Middle East autocracies"-- Google and Facebook are in bed with US/Israel regimes. In great contrast, Twitter is defending in court its members from all government-sponsored abuses of their civil rights.
Yes, seafoid, the American mainstream news media, literary and Art circles, and Hollywood and our Congress has really been so helpful in deepening the average American's understanding of the multiple narratives in the region. I noticed that the former ABC top executive, David Westin, a shabbas goy if there ever was one, in his book Exit Interview, distinguished for young budding journalists that there is normalcy versus personal bias--he's an aging white shoe lawyer, yet still does not see that "normalcy" is not to be conflated with objectivity, whether in thepast or present.
Woody, stupid, uneducated, and also willfully ignorant. Why shouldn't the average American be as easily manipulated by his or her government and media than any other people? Well, yes, tradition of free press, democracy, and now we have the internet as a way to go beyond mainstream news propaganda too. Seems the answer to your question is a combination of half literally below average in brain power, and half willfully ignorant.
The US is not quite so far gone at the moment, but it's well on its way to everything Anonymous rails against in his or her article here. And this despite the obvious fact the US has a history of democracy and is not under military rule per se. Yes, indeed, the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. As an American, I can really relate to Egypt's current problem because so much of it strikes home here in the good Old USA. So much for America these days. My relatives who served and/or died in the US military must be rolling over in their graves as I am too although I'm not quite dead. When was the Statute Of Liberty replaced by the M-16, waterboards, and the seal of Goldman-Sachs cum Maddow?
So, Caro never mentioned in his book that Robert Kennedy may have remembered Beaverbrook's assessment later, after events like the Lavon false flag affair? For example as Grant Smith states: "On Nov. 11, 1962 the Justice Department's FARA section, under then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, ordered the AZC to begin registering as an Israeli foreign agent." AZC was a predecessor entity to AIPAC. If you want to see a detailed expose of the origins of AIPAC and how it has avoided being registered under FARA, as well as just when and how AIPAC and associate entities took over the mainstream press: link to wrmea.org
In November of 2009, Grant met with top US officials, pushing for renewed investigation of AIPAC under FARA. He was grilled by four officials and has not heard anything since on the matter as far as I know.
No Fredblogs, that's not the end of story; here's the end of story straight from the horses' mouths:
General Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff, Israeli Defence Forces:
"I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." (Le Monde, February 28, 1968 )
Menachem Begin, Minister without Portfoli:
"In June l967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." (New York Times, August 21, 1982)
General Ezer Weizman, Chief of Operations, Israeli Defence Forces, General Staff:
The former Commander of the Air Force, General Ezer Weitzman stated that there was "no threat of destruction" but that the attack on Egypt, Jordan and Syria was nevertheless justified so that Israel could "exist according the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies."
"There was never a danger of extermination. This hypothesis had never been considered in any serious meeting." (Ha'aretz, March 29, 1972)
Moshe Dayan, The Defense Minister in 1967:
Dayan who gave the order to conquer the Golan Heights, said, many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and that the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for the farmland. Dayan stated "They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was... The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us." (The New York Times, May 11, 1997)
General Mordechai Hod, Commanding General, Israeli Air Force:
"Sixteen years planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it." (Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978, pp. 558-559)
General Mattitiahu Peled, Chief Quartermaster-General's Branch, Israeli Defence Forces, General Staff:
"All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, had never been considered in our calculations prior to the unleashing of hostilities. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our defence against the Egyptian threat. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel's existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army." (Le Monde, June 3, 1972)
General Yeshayahu Gavish, Commanding General Southern Command:
"The danger of Israel's extermination was hardly present before the Six-day war." (Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection , New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978, p. 558)
General Haim Barlev, Chief of General Staff Branch, Israeli Defence Forces:
"We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility." (Ma' ariv, April 4, 1972)
General Chaim Herzog, Commanding General and first Military Govemor, Israeli Occupied West Bank:
"There was no danger of annihilation. Israeli headquarters never believed in this danger." (Ma' ariv, April 4, 1972)
Mordechai Bentov, Minister of Housing:
"The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail, and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory." (Al-Hamishmar, April 14, 1971)
General Meir Amit, the former head of Military Intelligence who was head of Mossad in 1967:
"There is going to be a war. Our army is now fully mobilized. But we cannot remain in that condition for long. Because we have a civilian army our economy is shuddering to a stop. We don't have the manpower right now even to bring in the crops. Sugar beets are rotting in the earth. We have to make quick decisions... If we can get the first blow in our casualties will be comparatively light..." ( Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan and Eli Landau, The Mossad: Israel's Secret Intelligence Service , New York: New American Library, 1978)
Apart from the direct evidence (from the mouths of those involved) consider that if the Arabs had really desired to attack, then they certainly would not tell their enemy that they were about to do so... they would just attack, no warning, no buildup, just war, like in 1973.
What you are reading about is the third attack of the Arabs on poor little Israel. Read the above again, does it sound like the Arabs attacked the Jews or that the Jews attacked the Arabs. The lies that Israel has fed people are so outrageous, they are laughable, except for one thing... they have worked, most especially in the "free speech, democratic" USA has Israel's BIG LIE, repeated over and over worked!
Yep, Annie, and we equipped and trained the non-communist Chinese troops while the flying tigers were there too, again before we were at war with Japan, well before Pearl Harbor attack.
True, AllenBee, but a small caveat: The US has a number of MOU with Israel where in we specifically guarantee Israel's oil supply, even at the expense of our own oil needs; we specifically guarantee Israel's superiority of weaponry, so that no US company may sell, e.g., Saudi Arabia, fighter-bomber jets equal to Israel's in quality/quantity unless US gives Israel higher quality fighter-bomber jets--that is, we insure Israel will always have the military edge--again, this promise may call for Israel getting those jets even if the US has not yet equipped, or equipped its own forces with them. The key in the MOU is we promise Israel's security yet It is Israel who triggers our obligations by its sole decision if it's security is threatened.
Anybody know the legal stature of an American MOU with one foreign country where all the benefits run to the foreign country and there's no quid pro quo?
unverified__104i17e2, the build up to the June 67 war is laid out here, very objectively and with many credible references:
link to normanfinkelstein.com
I urge readers to go to the link--you won't be sorry. You will see that given the Jewish settler mindset from the start, nothing was going to stop Israel manipulating for war, and you will appreciate nothing has changed to this day in terms of options, given both US & Israel's desire to control the oil regimes. Israel has always been against any "Arab Spring." Now that one is on-going, it takes an awfully optimistic mind to see anything but at minimum a regional war on the horizon in the ME.
Norman Finkelstein: In order to understand the biuld up to the war the best place to begin is November, 1966. There was an Israeli retaliatory, as they call it, attack on a Jordanian village called Samu. In the course of this attack on Samu they blew up around 125 buildings and killed a large number of Jordanian soldiers.
When that attack happened the Jordanians and also the Syrians began to attack Nasser for not coming to their defense. Here was this Egyptian president claiming to be the leader of Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism and he was doing nothing. Nasser was being taunted for his, as it were, impotence in the face of Israeli aggression.
And there were various incidents in the Syrian Golan Heights and also by Syrian-backed Palestinian commandos. Now there there’s a certain amount of confusion which is important to clarify. Moshe Dayan, who became the defense minister during the June ’67 war, gave an interview in 1976 in which he acknowledges, and now I’m more or less quoting him, that 80%, he said at least 80%, but I’ll say 80% of the incidents with the Syrians were instigated by us. That we were engaged, now I’m using my language, but it’s I think a correct paraphrase, we were engaged in a land grab in what were called the demilitarized zones between Syria and Israel. And in the course of this land grab there were conflicts arising with the Syrians. And it was only as a result of these conflicts that the Syrians then would fire artillery from the Golan Heights on the Israelis. So Moshe Dayan himself acknowledged that was instigated by the Israelis.
In April, just let me get right up to the point where the count down, as it were, begins. In April 1967 one of those incidents instigated by the Israelis then unfolded into an aerial battle with the Syrians. And the Israelis knocked down 6 Syrian planes, 6 Syrian Migs, including 1 over Damascus. And it was at this point again when Nasser is being taunted that “you’re not doing anything.”
Things then start deteriorating between Israel and the Syrians. Come the beginning of May Israel is making clear that it’s going to engage in a large scale strike against Syria and now the test is for Nasser. Are you going to do anything about it? The Israelis are announcing over and over again, the generals, the statesmen, that we’re going to give Syria now a serious blow. And it’s at that point that Nasser announces, or Nasser tells Secretary General [not "of State"] U Thant, that the peace keeping force which had been stationed between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai, that peace keeping force should be withdrawn. And that’s the beginning of the count down to the war.
JM: A lot of people seem to think that Arab nationalism was in part threatening the State of Israel. That really what was happening was Arab nationalism threatening the State of Israel, when basically, in the Straits of Tiran this was a situation where Egypt decided, well, this was something that we’re going to blockade there. Israel thought this was in our national interest, we’re being existentially threatened by these countries, this was the last straw, and then that was kind of the thrust of where it started.
NF: The problem with that is, here it’s the devil in the details. You have to know the facts in order to understand what actually happened.
It is correct that the Israelis always feared a kind of, what they called, Ataturk, a secular nationalist in Turkey who modernized the country. And they were fearful of the equivalent in the Arab world of an Ataturk. And they saw that equivalent being Nasser, a secular nationalist who was gonna mobilize the Arab world.
Now when Nasser came to power he wasn’t at all interested in Israel. He was interested in modernizing Egypt but the Israelis were fearful of a modern Egypt, especially a modern Egypt preaching Pan-Arab nationalism.
And so the record is very clear. 1953, 1954, Ben Gurion, the Prime Minister, and people like Moshe Dayan, they are determined, and here I don’t think there’s any controversy in the scholarly record, they are determined to provoke Nasser into a war so they can knock him out. And there was a famous raid in February 1955 in Gaza, many Egyptian soldiers are killed, they’re hoping, they’re hoping, they’re hoping to provoke Nasser into a war. It doesn’t work and in 1956 they simply launch an attack of their own with the Brittish and the French, the so called Sinai Campaign. What happens in ’67 is, through the concatenation of events, they see a new opportunity to knock out that threat which they always feared, namely Nasser or a modernizing force in the Arab world. And they used the opportunity of June ’67 to crush Nasser.
So in one sense it’s true they were fearful of an Arab nationalism but you have to understand what that fear was. They feared any modernization of the Arab world because they viewed themselves as a kind of alien entity in the Arab world which was was existentially in conflict with that world. And the only way to preserve their security, in their minds, is to keep taking out the club and breaking the skull of the Arabs.
The famous Israeli adages, “The Arabs only understand the language of force,” you have to keep hitting them for them to get the message to stay in line. When Israelis talk about their deterrence capacity, deterrence means, as they state themselves, they have to fear us because if they don’t fear us then at some point they’re going to attack us. That’s how the Israelis see it.
Just on the specific points, quickly.
Number one, the first dramatic moment is when Nasser removes the peace keeping force from the Sinai. That’s considered the first step towards the war. But there was an easy solution to that problem. All Israel had to say was, restation the UN forces on our side of the border. If they were effective on the Egyptian side, they would have to have been equally effective on the Israeli side.
U Thant in his memoir, the Secretary General, the main military figure there, a fellow named Odd Bull, from Norway, in his memoir, they all say the war could’ve been averted had Israel simply restationed those UN forces on its side of the border. And even Tom Segev in his new book 1967 he says, albeit, in a footnote, had they restationed the forces on their side, the Israeli side, the war could’ve been prevented.
The question of the Straits of Tiran. Ok. Number one, U Thant had made an offer, he said let’s do what happened in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. Let’s have a moratorium. The moratorium would be, Egypt promises not to fire on foreign vessels that go through the Straits of Tiran, Israel promises it won’t send through Israeli-flagged vessels. Egypt says, fine. Israel says, no.
Now, another unknown fact. Everybody refers to the blockade in the Straits of Tiran. There was no blockade. I know you’ll be surprised to learn that. It’s a little known fact. The first couple of days the Egyptians searched ships. By the end of the week they stopped searching the ships. The ships were going right through. We know that because the main figure there, he actually just passed away this week, Indar Jit Rikhye, he wrote a book called The Sinai Blunder, and he was in charge of the UN forces there. There was no blockade. He writes it in the book, I even asked, kind of surprised, I called him to check on it a couple of years ago and he laughed. He said there was no blockade.
Number three. Nasser said, you say you have the rights of passage in the Straits of Tiran, we say you don’t. If you want, go to the World Court. Let the World Court adjudicate it. Nasser said, yes. The Israelis said, no.
The important point is, if under international law you’re duty bound to exploit all diplomatic options before going to war, Israel didn’t exploit any diplomatic options for a very good reason. It wanted the war. Why? Because they were confident it would be a walkover, it would be won very quickly and very easily.
Now that may come as surprise to listners but the record is very clear on that. Let me just briefly, quickly, go through it.
May 1967, Israel’s big fear is not going to war. It’s big fear is a repetition of 1956. That is, we go in, we knock them out, but the Americans say, get out. They’re afraid not of the Arabs, they’re afraid of the American reaction. So throughout May they’re sending their people, many, to the United States, what will the US do? They’re asking Johnson, McNamara, the CIA, they’re asking everyone, James Angleton, what will the US do? The first 2 weeks the US is saying, you’re not going. The Israelis are saying, what do you mean we’re not going, they’re threatening us, they’re gonna attack us, they’re gonna destroy us, it’s gonna be another Holocaust. Each time they said that President Johnson asked another one of the intelligence agencies, there were at least a half dozen, he keeps asking them, what’s gonna happen if there’s a war? Over and over again the intelligence agencies keep saying 2 things. Number one, there’s not chance Nasser’s going to attack. None at all. And number two, if he does attack, to quote Lyndon Johnson, as he said to the Israeli Eban, “you’re gonna whip their ass.” In fact the CIA predicted the war would be 7 days long, 7 to 10 days.
Now, you may say, that’s the American intelligence, what about the Israeli? We know exactly what the Israeli intelligence was because June 3, 2 days before the war, the head of Israeli intelligence, Meir Amit, he comes to Washington. He’s trying to feel them out, how will they react? He meets with the Americans and the American say this is our intelligence. And you know what Amit says to them? We do not dispute any of your findings, any of your projections. That means June 3 he agrees no chance Nasser will attack and, if by some weird twist of fate he does, “you’ll whip their ass” to quote President Johnson.
Their only concenr was, what will the Americans say? And by the first week in June they were getting signals, through back channels, that the Americans were gonna let them do it, because the Americans didn’t like Nasser either, and they decide, let them do it. That was their concern. There was never concern about the Arabs. They knew exactly what would happen. It was the Americans, they didn’t want a repeat of ’56.
JM: You’re listening to Worldview from Chicago Public Radio. I’m Jerome McDonell and we’re talking about Israel’s 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria with Norman Finkelstein, Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePaul University.
One interpretation says that Israel took the Golan Heights, General Moshe Dayan went on an ego trip and decided on his own to take the Heights without consulting the Israeli leadership, I asked Norman Finkelstein what he thought about that.
NF: No, that’s not really what happened, it was actually the reverse. Dayan had no real interest in the Golan Heights. The one who did was the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Eshkol was an agricultural, his main concern was agriculture, he came from the, I think the Kibbutz movement, may be the Moshav, but I think the Kibbutz movement, and there were vital waters, the Baniyas, as they were called, in the Golan, the water, and there was also rich land. And it was the Kibbutzim in the North who were campaigning hard to attack the Golan. So they sent delegations to Dayan and others during the war, because the Golan, as you remember, was taken during the very last day. There was a ceasefire being imposed and just at the last minute they took the Golan. Dayan was fearful, basically they were all fearful, that if they attack Syria it was gonna mean a clash with the Soviet Union, because the main Syrian backer was the Russians at the time. So there was a tactical concern there and the push came from Eshkol and the Kibbutzim and the guy on the Northern front. All of them had coveted different parts of the area outside Israel. A lot of the generals coveted the West Bank. Others coveted the Sinai. Others coveted the Golan. And once again, an opportunity arose to broaden or deepen Israel’s borders and different generals on different fronts took different initiatives. I won’t say they planned to do it and that’s why they created this war. They saw it as an opportunity.
Now people forget how small the timespan is. From ’48 to ’67, it’s less than 20 years. And they were never satisfied with those ’48 borders. They called it the borders of lamentation because they didn’t get East Jerusalem, they didn’t get the Jewish Quarter, they considered the most sacred lands to be places like Hebron, you know, Rachel’s Tomb by Bethlehem. And so it’s only a 20 year period. It’s all the same actors. It’s all the same people. And it’s only 11 years after Sinai. In Sinai they conquered the Gaza and they wanted the West Bank. So it’s the same people, the same mentality, and here was a new opportunity and they took advantage, it wasn’t their first goal. The first goal was clear, and there I think Segev gets it right, the first goal, as he puts it — crush Nasser. Then the second goal is, if you can, reshape those borders.
00:18:22
JM: So is the interpretation that this was an accidental acquisition, does that fit with you? NF: No. JM: I mean some people look at it and say that Israel didn’t really want to conquer all these areas…
NF: Right, that’s what Michael Oren says, and I wrote a long examination of his book and I said it was an accident waiting to happen. All the pieces were in place and now you had the chance. But they all talked about it before the war. It’s all over their writings. They had all, and it’s something that Segev goes through, he goes through all of their plans. They all had thought about this for years and hey had all sorts of operational plans should the occassion arise. So there was no accident about it.
Let me just make another point that Segev makes. You could’ve just defeated Jordan without taking over the West Bank. You simply knock out it’s airforce and disable its army. You didn’t have to take over the West Bank to defeat Jordan. We know ourselves, in order to defeat an enemy you don’t have to always occupy its territory. You simply, as it were, defang it militarily. The decision to occupy the West Bank was a choice. It was, as I think Segev uses the expression, it was a land grab in the West Bank.
JM: It’s possible to interpret this differnt ways but after 1967 did Israel become a more religious country because they had so many of the sites in their possession you were just talking about, Rachel’s Tomb, … of Jerusalem. Did it kind of reconect Israel with its religious roots in a way that changed politicians and changed people in Israel and kind of brought fourth the Settler movement and things of that nature?
NF: I don’t, you know… People make a big deal out of that, being reconnected with the Wailing Wall and places like the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and so fourth. I don’t think that’s really what it was. What it was was the Israelis, because they were told by their government that they were on the verge of a new Holocaust and because the Israeli people were genuinely fearful, as were American Jews, it did seem that what happened in ’67 was a miracle.
And so there was all of this kind of religious metaphore about the 6 Day War, the 6 days of creation, this miracle that had happened, and it proves there must be a god, and the Jews must be a chosen people, and all of that went to their head and was very intoxicating and it had a religious quality to it. But I don’t think it was the reconnection with the land and that sort of stuff. No, I think it was the headiness of the war which was largely responsible for what you could call the burst of irrationality and this belief that a miracle had happened, whereas, in fact, there was nothing miraculous about it at all. A perfectly rational assessment of the assembly of forces on both sides would tell you who was going to win.
JM: Do you think that Israel, after it acquired all of this territory, realized, well, this was going to be something that we could trade for peace, this is going to transform the region because before we couldn’t really get anywhere with our neighbouring countries but now we’ve got something to trade for peace and this is the thing that is going to eventually lead to peace with Egypt and may be the neighbours?
NF: Well, that question is predicated on the assumption that there wasn’t a diplomatic resolution possible before June 1967. I don’t think the record bears that out.
There were 2 issues before 1967 which prevented a diplomatic settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
One issue was the borders. Israel was awarded 56% of Palestine under the UN Partition resolution. By the end of the first Arab-Israeli War in 1949 they had about 80% of Palestine. So there was an issue of it having to return to those Partition borders.
And the second big question was the refugees. The 750,000 Palestinians who’d been expelled in 1948 and the question of how to resolve that question. And Israel didn’t want to take back the Palestinian refugees.
And so now you have after ’67. What you can say with a certain amount of accuracy, I think it was very well put by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s former Foreign Minister, in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, he said in June 1967 — and it’s your listners, I think it’s worth pondering — “in June ’67 we won the ’48 borders.” That is to say after June ’67 there was no longer any talk about returning to the Partition Plan, “we won the borders.”
And now the question was, you’ve won the borders, and now there’s a question of the refugees. It seems pretty clear after ’67 Arab states — I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong, I’m just saying it as a fact — the Arab states were open to the resolution of the refugee question which would be compensation instead of return.
So if Israel had been willing to accept the ’67 borders and compensation — which would’ve been basically paid for internationally, not by Israel — and compensation for the refugees, they could’ve had peace since ’68.
No question about it.
But, like most States, they just had this big victory, they are intoxicated by it, the Arabs are humiliated and the famous line by Moshe Dayan, we’re standing by the telephone, waiting for your call, and if you don’t call, too bad, we’re not leaving. And that’s why I think The Economist, this past week, it had an article on the 40th anniversary, and the title was not bad, I didn’t really agree with the content, but the title was not bad, it was called “The Wasted Victory,” because they could’ve gotten the ’48 borders and the resolution of the refugee question. But they didn’t want it, they wanted more. They got greedy.
And the greediness, I think, history will show, destroyed the country. I don’t think pesonally any longer — and I don’t say it with any kind of satisfaction — I don’t think Israel has a future there anymore. It’s turned into a, you could call it, it’s turned into a crazy State because when you listen to the language of Israel, it’s totally out of sync with the rest of the world. You take the last war in Iraq. There’re only 2 countries in the world that supported the war, Kuwait, for reasons you can understand, and Israel — 70% of the population. Now, the war with Iran. There’s literally only 1 country in the world, you know, look at the polls — Israel. The population, the government pushing hard — war, war, war. Attacking Lebanon, attacking Gaza, it’s become a kind of crazy State and a lot of the craziness came out of this June ’67 war. It could’ve had a relatively, you know, you can’t say it’s gonna be perfect, it’s not gonna be Scandinavia, but they could’ve resolved the major problems 40 years ago.
Two things. They got intoxicated with their power and secondly, they got entangled in ways which I think were very detrimental to them in this relationship with the United States.
JM: Did the ’67 War cement the relationship with the United States?
NF: Yes, there’s no question. You know, Israel’s main arms supplier before 1967 was France. It was France that provided the Mist [spelling?] airplanes for the airforce. And also it was France that helped them build the Dimona, the nuclear reactor. They had ambivalent relations with the US, sometimes warm, sometimes cold. But after ’67, and the record’s very clear on this, ’67, the United States, I guess it’s a National Security advisor to Lyndon Johnson, he’s very thrilled — why? You knocked out Nasser. And they’re worried about this Arab nationalism spreading to places like Saudi Arabia, all those rickety regimes which have all of our oil that happens to be under their land, so they’re very happy that Israel has knocked out Nasser. And that’s the beginning of this relationship, which I think is really misunderstood here as Israel determining US foreign policy — it’s just not what’s happening.
There’s a common interest. Israel has always sought to dominate the Arab world and so has the United States. Now, for different reasons — the US for the oil, Israel, because it viewed itself being in a, as it were, intrinsically conflictual relationship with the Arab world, so it has to either dominate it or it’s gonna be destroyed, that’s how they see it.
In particular people like Ben Gurion, they never thought you could live at peace with the Arab world because they said we’re aliens, we forced ourselves on them, they’ll never accept us. And so they always felt that they’re gonna in conflict, as did the US because the US wanted their oil.
00:29:38
JM: I think a lot of listeners would say, well, there’s been Jews in the Middle East for all these years, why do they necessarily feel perpetually alien?
They were not always aliens, they’re people from the Middle East too.
NF: Yes, I think the reason is, well, part of it, I don’t want to say all of it, is a psychological dimension. You know, Jews coming from Eastern Europe and who see the world in terms of the Jews v. the Goyim, the Jews v. the Gentiles, that there’ll always be a conflict, so they’re transplanting that mentality to the Middle East and they’re saying the only reason Jews were acceptedin the Arab world before us is because they head what was called a dhimmi status, namely a second class status, that nobody will accept the Jews as being full equals, whether it’s in Europe or in the Arab world, and therefore we have to, you know, constantly remind them who’s in charge.
So part of it is a psychological dimension and part of it is a factual one. They realized we came from there and we imposed ourselves here and that it’s going to be resisted.
Of course there is the possibility that there will be animus but there will also be acquiescence over a period of time, as it were, acquiescing in the facts.
JM: Do you think the ’67 war has any larger legacy now, 40 years later? Obviously there’s lots of unresolved issues that were created, but are there other, larger legacies?
NF: Well, the main legacy is, how do you resolve the conflict. And you could already see, right after the June ’67 war, they are dealing with the same issues as they’re dealing with now. Number one, they have this big problem, this is ’67, they have absorbed 1 million Arabs and they want to be a Jewish State. What do you do? They’re afraid, they’re terrified of this Arab birth rate and now the 1 million more Arabs, how do you preserve a Jewish State? And right after the war they’re already thinking in terms of, well, may be we can transfer some, may be we can send a hundred or three hundred thousand to Iraq. The same problem — we got the land but we don’t want the people, and how do you resolve it?
Not an easy problem to resolve because in the great scheme of things there’re only 3 possible resolutions.
One, you can call it, so to speak, the American way — wipe out the indigenous population. That’s not really an option, at least in the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century.
A second option is to expel them. They tried that and they weren’t all together unsuccessful in ’67 — people forget they managed to expel about 250,000 Arabs from the West Bank in 6 days. The whole population was just 1,200,000. So for a 6 day period they got rid of quite a few but it didn’t work. They still were left with a million.
And then the third possibility is, if you can’t exterminate them and you can’t expell them, the third possibility is reduce them to second level people, namely an apartheid type resolution of the conflict, as it were, the South African way.
And that’s what Israel has been trying to do for the past number of years, to create a kind of apartheid solution in the Occupied Territories. Israel’s absorbing 10% of the West Bank with the Wall. It’s absorbing the Jordan valley, which is about a 1/3 of the West Bank. It’s criss crossing the Occupied Territories with settlements to break it up into what they call cantons and so they’re trying to create an apartheid type resolution.
Now, those are, as it were, the negative solutions to the problem: extermination, expulsion and apartheid.
And then there’s another option — the option which is embraced by the whole of human kind, apart from Israel and the United States. And that is return to the June 1967 borders, mutual recognition between an Israeli and Palestinian State and some sort of mutually acceptable resolution of the refugee question. That’s the option. Give them the ’67 border or a land swap of equal size and equal value, don’t give us the Negev. Equal size and equal value, it’s settled.
Those are the terms to resolve the conflict. They have endured for 40 years.
JM: What do you think would’ve happened if there wasn’t a ’67 war, that if it had just been Jordan sticking out there, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem? What happens without it?
00:35:15
NF: To tell you the truth, I think a war was inevitable. It was inevitable not because there was no diplomatic solution possible. The war was inevitable for a separate reason. Israel will not allow the Arab world to modernize. That’s the big problem.
The big problem is that whenever any kind of autonomous modernizing element emerges in the Middle East Israel sees it as, to use their favorite word, an existential threat. Because they don’t believe, if the Arab world modernizes, it will ever accept them and that I think is a very big problem. They will not allow an autonomous modernizing element to exist in the Middle East, apart from themselves.
JM: Wasn’t there a time during the Oslo Accords though when Shimon Peres and others really thought, well, what we’ve got to do is build up business relations NF: Right, a new JM: neighbouring relations, modernization, everything…
NF: They called it A New Middle East. A New Middle East that we control. And that’s how all the Arabs looked at Peres’ offer. [The way] they looked at it is as he wants to create a new Middle East in which we, with out technology, our Silicon Valley and our this and that, and we’ll be in charge. I’m not faulting them. I’m too old and too wise in these things to hold Israel to a different standard. I’m just saying, the racism is so deeply entrenched, they can’t conceive of dealing with Arabs as equals. They can’t. They not only can’t conceive it, they dread it. Because they see themselves as, which they are, they’re a very small little entity in this Arab world and they don’t think the’ll ever be accepted. And, frankly, you know, they want now admission into the EU, they don’t even see themselves as part of the EU — excuse me — as part of the Middle East. They themselves see themselves as Western, not Eastern. Modern, not backward. It’s in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy — you will not be accepted in large part because you don’t see yourself as part of us, you see yourself as alien, you see yourself as superior, you see yourself as better. So how can you expect under those circumstances you’ll ever be accepted?
Palestinians, Arabs, give them a chance like everybody else. The Israelis can’t see that. The sense of superiority, the deeply entrenched racism. It was a racism that had to be. You have to understand that. It was like our racism with the Native Americans. If you don’t have that deeply entrenched racism, how could you justify in your own minds what you’re doing? You know? You’re throwing people out of their homes. You’re saying their connection with the land is not as important as our connection with the land. Well, how can you justify that unless there’s a very deeply entrenched racism? It’s a functional necessity.
But if you get to know them, talk to them, meet them — smart, nice, descent, like most people, on the whole, in general, you know? Then there’s hope.
There’s a lot to overcome, for sure, but there are possibilities for people to learn to respect each other and achieve, you know, no eternal peace, but a reasonable, practical living together.
That’s what you hope for. And work towards. That’s the most important [part] — you have to work for it.
"Norman Finkelstein: In order to understand the build up to the war the best place to begin is November, 1966. There was an Israeli retaliatory, as they call it, attack on a Jordanian village called Samu. In the course of this
attack on Samu they blew up around 125 buildings and killed a large number of Jordanian soldiers.
When that attack happened the Jordanians and also the Syrians began to attack Nasser for not coming to their defense. Here was this Egyptian president claiming to be the leader of Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism and he was doing nothing. Nasser was being taunted for his, as it were, impotence in the face of Israeli aggression.
And there were various incidents in the Syrian Golan Heights and also by Syrian-backed Palestinian commandos. Now there there’s a certain amount of confusion which is important to clarify. Moshe Dayan, who became the defense minister during the June ’67 war, gave an interview in 1976 in which he acknowledges, and now I’m more or less quoting him, that 80%, he said at least 80%, but I’ll say 80% of the incidents with the Syrians were instigated by us. That we were engaged, now I’m using my language, but it’s I think a correct paraphrase, we were engaged in a land grab in what were called the demilitarized zones between Syria and Israel. And in the course of this land grab there were conflicts arising with the Syrians. And it was only as a result of these conflicts that the Syrians then would fire artillery from the Golan Heights on the Israelis. So Moshe Dayan himself acknowledged that was instigated by the Israelis.
In April, just let me get right up to the point where the count down, as it were, begins. In April 1967 one of those incidents instigated by the Israelis then unfolded into an aerial battle with the Syrians. And the Israelis knocked down 6 Syrian planes, 6 Syrian Migs, including 1 over Damascus. And it was at this point again when Nasser is being taunted that “you’re not doing anything.”
Things then start deteriorating between Israel and the Syrians. Come the beginning of May Israel is making clear that it’s going to engage in a large scale strike against Syria and now the test is for Nasser. Are you going to do anything about it? The Israelis are announcing over and over again, the generals, the statesmen, that we’re going to give Syria now a serious blow. And it’s at that point that Nasser announces, or Nasser tells Secretary General [not "of State"] U Thant, that the peace keeping force which had been stationed between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai, that peace keeping force should be withdrawn. And that’s the beginning of the count down to the war.
JM: A lot of people seem to think that Arab nationalism was in part threatening the State of Israel. That really what was happening was Arab nationalism threatening the State of Israel, when basically, in the Straits of Tiran this was a situation where Egypt decided, well, this was something that we’re going to blockade there. Israel thought this was in our national interest, we’re being existentially threatened by these countries, this was the last straw, and then that was kind of the thrust of where it started.
NF: The problem with that is, here it’s the devil in the details. You have to know the facts in order to understand what actually happened.
It is correct that the Israelis always feared a kind of, what they called, Ataturk, a secular nationalist in Turkey who modernized the country. And they were fearful of the equivalent in the Arab world of an Ataturk. And they saw that equivalent being Nasser, a secular nationalist who was gonna mobilize the Arab world.
Now when Nasser came to power he wasn’t at all interested in Israel. He was interested in modernizing Egypt but the Israelis were fearful of a modern Egypt, especially a modern Egypt preaching Pan-Arab nationalism.
And so the record is very clear. 1953, 1954, Ben Gurion, the Prime Minister, and people like Moshe Dayan, they are determined, and here I don’t think there’s any controversy in the scholarly record, they are determined to provoke Nasser into a war so they can knock him out. And there was a famous raid in February 1955 in Gaza, many Egyptian soldiers are killed, they’re hoping, they’re hoping, they’re hoping to provoke Nasser into a war. It doesn’t work and in 1956 they simply launch an attack of their own with the Brittish and the French, the so called Sinai Campaign. What happens in ’67 is, through the concatenation of events, they see a new opportunity to knock out that threat which they always feared, namely Nasser or a modernizing force in the Arab world. And they used the opportunity of June ’67 to crush Nasser.
So in one sense it’s true they were fearful of an Arab nationalism but you have to understand what that fear was. They feared any modernization of the Arab world because they viewed themselves as a kind of alien entity in the Arab world which was was existentially in conflict with that world. And the only way to preserve their security, in their minds, is to keep taking out the club and breaking the skull of the Arabs.
The famous Israeli adages, “The Arabs only understand the language of force,” you have to keep hitting them for them to get the message to stay in line. When Israelis talk about their deterrence capacity, deterrence means, as they state themselves, they have to fear us because if they don’t fear us then at some point they’re going to attack us. That’s how the Israelis see it.
Just on the specific points, quickly.
Number one, the first dramatic moment is when Nasser removes the peace keeping force from the Sinai. That’s considered the first step towards the war. But there was an easy solution to that problem. All Israel had to say was, restation the UN forces on our side of the border. If they were effective on the Egyptian side, they would have to have been equally effective on the Israeli side.
U Thant in his memoir, the Secretary General, the main military figure there, a fellow named Odd Bull, from Norway, in his memoir, they all say the war could’ve been averted had Israel simply restationed those UN forces on its side of the border. And even Tom Segev in his new book 1967 he says, albeit, in a footnote, had they restationed the forces on their side, the Israeli side, the war could’ve been prevented.
The question of the Straits of Tiran. Ok. Number one, U Thant had made an offer, he said let’s do what happened in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. Let’s have a moratorium. The moratorium would be, Egypt promises not to fire on foreign vessels that go through the Straits of Tiran, Israel promises it won’t send through Israeli-flagged vessels. Egypt says, fine. Israel says, no.
Now, another unknown fact. Everybody refers to the blockade in the Straits of Tiran. There was no blockade. I know you’ll be surprised to learn that. It’s a little known fact. The first couple of days the Egyptians searched ships. By the end of the week they stopped searching the ships. The ships were going right through. We know that because the main figure there, he actually just passed away this week, Indar Jit Rikhye, he wrote a book called The Sinai Blunder, and he was in charge of the UN forces there. There was no blockade. He writes it in the book, I even asked, kind of surprised, I called him to check on it a couple of years ago and he laughed. He said there was no blockade.
Number three. Nasser said, you say you have the rights of passage in the Straits of Tiran, we say you don’t. If you want, go to the World Court. Let the World Court adjudicate it. Nasser said, yes. The Israelis said, no.
The important point is, if under international law you’re duty bound to exploit all diplomatic options before going to war, Israel didn’t exploit any diplomatic options for a very good reason. It wanted the war. Why? Because they were confident it would be a walkover, it would be won very quickly and very easily.
Now that may come as surprise to listners but the record is very clear on that. Let me just briefly, quickly, go through it.
May 1967, Israel’s big fear is not going to war. It’s big fear is a repetition of 1956. That is, we go in, we knock them out, but the Americans say, get out. They’re afraid not of the Arabs, they’re afraid of the American reaction. So throughout May they’re sending their people, many, to the United States, what will the US do? They’re asking Johnson, McNamara, the CIA, they’re asking everyone, James Angleton, what will the US do? The first 2 weeks the US is saying, you’re not going. The Israelis are saying, what do you mean we’re not going, they’re threatening us, they’re gonna attack us, they’re gonna destroy us, it’s gonna be another Holocaust. Each time they said that President Johnson asked another one of the intelligence agencies, there were at least a half dozen, he keeps asking them, what’s gonna happen if there’s a war? Over and over again the intelligence agencies keep saying 2 things. Number one, there’s not chance Nasser’s going to attack. None at all. And number two, if he does attack, to quote Lyndon Johnson, as he said to the Israeli Eban, “you’re gonna whip their ass.” In fact the CIA predicted the war would be 7 days long, 7 to 10 days.
Now, you may say, that’s the American intelligence, what about the Israeli? We know exactly what the Israeli intelligence was because June 3, 2 days before the war, the head of Israeli intelligence, Meir Amit, he comes to Washington. He’s trying to feel them out, how will they react? He meets with the Americans and the American say this is our intelligence. And you know what Amit says to them? We do not dispute any of your findings, any of your projections. That means June 3 he agrees no chance Nasser will attack and, if by some weird twist of fate he does, “you’ll whip their ass” to quote President Johnson.
Their only concenr was, what will the Americans say? And by the first week in June they were getting signals, through back channels, that the Americans were gonna let them do it, because the Americans didn’t like Nasser either, and they decide, let them do it. That was their concern. There was never concern about the Arabs. They knew exactly what would happen. It was the Americans, they didn’t want a repeat of ’56.
JM: You’re listening to Worldview from Chicago Public Radio. I’m Jerome McDonell and we’re talking about Israel’s 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria with Norman Finkelstein, Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePaul University.
One interpretation says that Israel took the Golan Heights, General Moshe Dayan went on an ego trip and decided on his own to take the Heights without consulting the Israeli leadership, I asked Norman Finkelstein what he thought about that.
NF: No, that’s not really what happened, it was actually the reverse. Dayan had no real interest in the Golan Heights. The one who did was the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Eshkol was an agricultural, his main concern was agriculture, he came from the, I think the Kibbutz movement, may be the Moshav, but I think the Kibbutz movement, and there were vital waters, the Baniyas, as they were called, in the Golan, the water, and there was also rich land. And it was the Kibbutzim in the North who were campaigning hard to attack the Golan. So they sent delegations to Dayan and others during the war, because the Golan, as you remember, was taken during the very last day. There was a ceasefire being imposed and just at the last minute they took the Golan. Dayan was fearful, basically they were all fearful, that if they attack Syria it was gonna mean a clash with the Soviet Union, because the main Syrian backer was the Russians at the time. So there was a tactical concern there and the push came from Eshkol and the Kibbutzim and the guy on the Northern front. All of them had coveted different parts of the area outside Israel. A lot of the generals coveted the West Bank. Others coveted the Sinai. Others coveted the Golan. And once again, an opportunity arose to broaden or deepen Israel’s borders and different generals on different fronts took different initiatives. I won’t say they planned to do it and that’s why they created this war. They saw it as an opportunity.
Now people forget how small the timespan is. From ’48 to ’67, it’s less than 20 years. And they were never satisfied with those ’48 borders. They called it the borders of lamentation because they didn’t get East Jerusalem, they didn’t get the Jewish Quarter, they considered the most sacred lands to be places like Hebron, you know, Rachel’s Tomb by Bethlehem. And so it’s only a 20 year period. It’s all the same actors. It’s all the same people. And it’s only 11 years after Sinai. In Sinai they conquered the Gaza and they wanted the West Bank. So it’s the same people, the same mentality, and here was a new opportunity and they took advantage, it wasn’t their first goal. The first goal was clear, and there I think Segev gets it right, the first goal, as he puts it — crush Nasser. Then the second goal is, if you can, reshape those borders.
00:18:22
JM: So is the interpretation that this was an accidental acquisition, does that fit with you? NF: No. JM: I mean some people look at it and say that Israel didn’t really want to conquer all these areas…
NF: Right, that’s what Michael Oren says, and I wrote a long examination of his book and I said it was an accident waiting to happen. All the pieces were in place and now you had the chance. But they all talked about it before the war. It’s all over their writings. They had all, and it’s something that Segev goes through, he goes through all of their plans. They all had thought about this for years and hey had all sorts of operational plans should the occassion arise. So there was no accident about it.
Let me just make another point that Segev makes. You could’ve just defeated Jordan without taking over the West Bank. You simply knock out it’s airforce and disable its army. You didn’t have to take over the West Bank to defeat Jordan. We know ourselves, in order to defeat an enemy you don’t have to always occupy its territory. You simply, as it were, defang it militarily. The decision to occupy the West Bank was a choice. It was, as I think Segev uses the expression, it was a land grab in the West Bank.
JM: It’s possible to interpret this differnt ways but after 1967 did Israel become a more religious country because they had so many of the sites in their possession you were just talking about, Rachel’s Tomb, … of Jerusalem. Did it kind of reconect Israel with its religious roots in a way that changed politicians and changed people in Israel and kind of brought fourth the Settler movement and things of that nature?
NF: I don’t, you know… People make a big deal out of that, being reconnected with the Wailing Wall and places like the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and so fourth. I don’t think that’s really what it was. What it was was the Israelis, because they were told by their government that they were on the verge of a new Holocaust and because the Israeli people were genuinely fearful, as were American Jews, it did seem that what happened in ’67 was a miracle.
And so there was all of this kind of religious metaphore about the 6 Day War, the 6 days of creation, this miracle that had happened, and it proves there must be a god, and the Jews must be a chosen people, and all of that went to their head and was very intoxicating and it had a religious quality to it. But I don’t think it was the reconnection with the land and that sort of stuff. No, I think it was the headiness of the war which was largely responsible for what you could call the burst of irrationality and this belief that a miracle had happened, whereas, in fact, there was nothing miraculous about it at all. A perfectly rational assessment of the assembly of forces on both sides would tell you who was going to win.
JM: Do you think that Israel, after it acquired all of this territory, realized, well, this was going to be something that we could trade for peace, this is going to transform the region because before we couldn’t really get anywhere with our neighbouring countries but now we’ve got something to trade for peace and this is the thing that is going to eventually lead to peace with Egypt and may be the neighbours?
NF: Well, that question is predicated on the assumption that there wasn’t a diplomatic resolution possible before June 1967. I don’t think the record bears that out.
There were 2 issues before 1967 which prevented a diplomatic settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
One issue was the borders. Israel was awarded 56% of Palestine under the UN Partition resolution. By the end of the first Arab-Israeli War in 1949 they had about 80% of Palestine. So there was an issue of it having to return to those Partition borders.
And the second big question was the refugees. The 750,000 Palestinians who’d been expelled in 1948 and the question of how to resolve that question. And Israel didn’t want to take back the Palestinian refugees.
And so now you have after ’67. What you can say with a certain amount of accuracy, I think it was very well put by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s former Foreign Minister, in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, he said in June 1967 — and it’s your listners, I think it’s worth pondering — “in June ’67 we won the ’48 borders.” That is to say after June ’67 there was no longer any talk about returning to the Partition Plan, “we won the borders.”
And now the question was, you’ve won the borders, and now there’s a question of the refugees. It seems pretty clear after ’67 Arab states — I’m not saying whether it’s right or wrong, I’m just saying it as a fact — the Arab states were open to the resolution of the refugee question which would be compensation instead of return.
So if Israel had been willing to accept the ’67 borders and compensation — which would’ve been basically paid for internationally, not by Israel — and compensation for the refugees, they could’ve had peace since ’68.
No question about it.
But, like most States, they just had this big victory, they are intoxicated by it, the Arabs are humiliated and the famous line by Moshe Dayan, we’re standing by the telephone, waiting for your call, and if you don’t call, too bad, we’re not leaving. And that’s why I think The Economist, this past week, it had an article on the 40th anniversary, and the title was not bad, I didn’t really agree with the content, but the title was not bad, it was called “The Wasted Victory,” because they could’ve gotten the ’48 borders and the resolution of the refugee question. But they didn’t want it, they wanted more. They got greedy.
And the greediness, I think, history will show, destroyed the country. I don’t think pesonally any longer — and I don’t say it with any kind of satisfaction — I don’t think Israel has a future there anymore. It’s turned into a, you could call it, it’s turned into a crazy State because when you listen to the language of Israel, it’s totally out of sync with the rest of the world. You take the last war in Iraq. There’re only 2 countries in the world that supported the war, Kuwait, for reasons you can understand, and Israel — 70% of the population. Now, the war with Iran. There’s literally only 1 country in the world, you know, look at the polls — Israel. The population, the government pushing hard — war, war, war. Attacking Lebanon, attacking Gaza, it’s become a kind of crazy State and a lot of the craziness came out of this June ’67 war. It could’ve had a relatively, you know, you can’t say it’s gonna be perfect, it’s not gonna be Scandinavia, but they could’ve resolved the major problems 40 years ago.
Two things. They got intoxicated with their power and secondly, they got entangled in ways which I think were very detrimental to them in this relationship with the United States.
JM: Did the ’67 War cement the relationship with the United States?
NF: Yes, there’s no question. You know, Israel’s main arms supplier before 1967 was France. It was France that provided the Mist [spelling?] airplanes for the airforce. And also it was France that helped them build the Dimona, the nuclear reactor. They had ambivalent relations with the US, sometimes warm, sometimes cold. But after ’67, and the record’s very clear on this, ’67, the United States, I guess it’s a National Security advisor to Lyndon Johnson, he’s very thrilled — why? You knocked out Nasser. And they’re worried about this Arab nationalism spreading to places like Saudi Arabia, all those rickety regimes which have all of our oil that happens to be under their land, so they’re very happy that Israel has knocked out Nasser. And that’s the beginning of this relationship, which I think is really misunderstood here as Israel determining US foreign policy — it’s just not what’s happening.
There’s a common interest. Israel has always sought to dominate the Arab world and so has the United States. Now, for different reasons — the US for the oil, Israel, because it viewed itself being in a, as it were, intrinsically conflictual relationship with the Arab world, so it has to either dominate it or it’s gonna be destroyed, that’s how they see it.
In particular people like Ben Gurion, they never thought you could live at peace with the Arab world because they said we’re aliens, we forced ourselves on them, they’ll never accept us. And so they always felt that they’re gonna in conflict, as did the US because the US wanted their oil.
00:29:38
JM: I think a lot of listeners would say, well, there’s been Jews in the Middle East for all these years, why do they necessarily feel perpetually alien?
They were not always aliens, they’re people from the Middle East too.
NF: Yes, I think the reason is, well, part of it, I don’t want to say all of it, is a psychological dimension. You know, Jews coming from Eastern Europe and who see the world in terms of the Jews v. the Goyim, the Jews v. the Gentiles, that there’ll always be a conflict, so they’re transplanting that mentality to the Middle East and they’re saying the only reason Jews were acceptedin the Arab world before us is because they head what was called a dhimmi status, namely a second class status, that nobody will accept the Jews as being full equals, whether it’s in Europe or in the Arab world, and therefore we have to, you know, constantly remind them who’s in charge.
So part of it is a psychological dimension and part of it is a factual one. They realized we came from there and we imposed ourselves here and that it’s going to be resisted.
Of course there is the possibility that there will be animus but there will also be acquiescence over a period of time, as it were, acquiescing in the facts.
JM: Do you think the ’67 war has any larger legacy now, 40 years later? Obviously there’s lots of unresolved issues that were created, but are there other, larger legacies?
NF: Well, the main legacy is, how do you resolve the conflict. And you could already see, right after the June ’67 war, they are dealing with the same issues as they’re dealing with now. Number one, they have this big problem, this is ’67, they have absorbed 1 million Arabs and they want to be a Jewish State. What do you do? They’re afraid, they’re terrified of this Arab birth rate and now the 1 million more Arabs, how do you preserve a Jewish State? And right after the war they’re already thinking in terms of, well, may be we can transfer some, may be we can send a hundred or three hundred thousand to Iraq. The same problem — we got the land but we don’t want the people, and how do you resolve it?
Not an easy problem to resolve because in the great scheme of things there’re only 3 possible resolutions.
One, you can call it, so to speak, the American way — wipe out the indigenous population. That’s not really an option, at least in the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century.
A second option is to expel them. They tried that and they weren’t all together unsuccessful in ’67 — people forget they managed to expel about 250,000 Arabs from the West Bank in 6 days. The whole population was just 1,200,000. So for a 6 day period they got rid of quite a few but it didn’t work. They still were left with a million.
And then the third possibility is, if you can’t exterminate them and you can’t expell them, the third possibility is reduce them to second level people, namely an apartheid type resolution of the conflict, as it were, the South African way.
And that’s what Israel has been trying to do for the past number of years, to create a kind of apartheid solution in the Occupied Territories. Israel’s absorbing 10% of the West Bank with the Wall. It’s absorbing the Jordan valley, which is about a 1/3 of the West Bank. It’s criss crossing the Occupied Territories with settlements to break it up into what they call cantons and so they’re trying to create an apartheid type resolution.
Now, those are, as it were, the negative solutions to the problem: extermination, expulsion and apartheid.
And then there’s another option — the option which is embraced by the whole of human kind, apart from Israel and the United States. And that is return to the June 1967 borders, mutual recognition between an Israeli and Palestinian State and some sort of mutually acceptable resolution of the refugee question. That’s the option. Give them the ’67 border or a land swap of equal size and equal value, don’t give us the Negev. Equal size and equal value, it’s settled.
Those are the terms to resolve the conflict. They have endured for 40 years.
JM: What do you think would’ve happened if there wasn’t a ’67 war, that if it had just been Jordan sticking out there, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem? What happens without it?
00:35:15
NF: To tell you the truth, I think a war was inevitable. It was inevitable not because there was no diplomatic solution possible. The war was inevitable for a separate reason. Israel will not allow the Arab world to modernize. That’s the big problem.
The big problem is that whenever any kind of autonomous modernizing element emerges in the Middle East Israel sees it as, to use their favorite word, an existential threat. Because they don’t believe, if the Arab world modernizes, it will ever accept them and that I think is a very big problem. They will not allow an autonomous modernizing element to exist in the Middle East, apart from themselves.
JM: Wasn’t there a time during the Oslo Accords though when Shimon Peres and others really thought, well, what we’ve got to do is build up business relations NF: Right, a new JM: neighbouring relations, modernization, everything…
NF: They called it A New Middle East. A New Middle East that we control. And that’s how all the Arabs looked at Peres’ offer. [The way] they looked at it is as he wants to create a new Middle East in which we, with out technology, our Silicon Valley and our this and that, and we’ll be in charge. I’m not faulting them. I’m too old and too wise in these things to hold Israel to a different standard. I’m just saying, the racism is so deeply entrenched, they can’t conceive of dealing with Arabs as equals. They can’t. They not only can’t conceive it, they dread it. Because they see themselves as, which they are, they’re a very small little entity in this Arab world and they don’t think the’ll ever be accepted. And, frankly, you know, they want now admission into the EU, they don’t even see themselves as part of the EU — excuse me — as part of the Middle East. They themselves see themselves as Western, not Eastern. Modern, not backward. It’s in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy — you will not be accepted in large part because you don’t see yourself as part of us, you see yourself as alien, you see yourself as superior, you see yourself as better. So how can you expect under those circumstances you’ll ever be accepted?
Palestinians, Arabs, give them a chance like everybody else. The Israelis can’t see that. The sense of superiority, the deeply entrenched racism. It was a racism that had to be. You have to understand that. It was like our racism with the Native Americans. If you don’t have that deeply entrenched racism, how could you justify in your own minds what you’re doing? You know? You’re throwing people out of their homes. You’re saying their connection with the land is not as important as our connection with the land. Well, how can you justify that unless there’s a very deeply entrenched racism? It’s a functional necessity.
But if you get to know them, talk to them, meet them — smart, nice, descent, like most people, on the whole, in general, you know? Then there’s hope."
--radio transcript of interview of NF in Chicago, 2007
Every single POTUS starting with Truman has left print, tape, telephonic or other media records indicating that any decision affecting Israel was immediately also a domestic issue due to the Israel Lobby. Truman, Johnson, Nixon leap out most immediately for me at the moment. The Cold War was of course also a major factor until it ended. Since then, the Israel Lobby has pretty much been the deciding factor along with USA's increased imperialism under the fight against "terrorism."
Yes Johnson is the key to the USA being taken over completely by the Israel Lobby; this was because (1) He looked at Israel as like (a) himself, as his Vietnam War policy drew more and more flack, leaving him isolated, and (b) even prior thereto, he looked at Israel's stance as akin to his notion of little Texas fighting big Mexico--the Alamo. While Johnson was great at making donkey trades, his actual education and intelligence regarding the I-P conflict was at the level of a moron. His approach was: you rich and influential American Jews should quit criticizing me for my war in Vietnam, because I'm backing Israel to the hilt. He had keyed in on PEP before it was an acronym. Johnson left tons of recordings of his insider chats with world leaders, except for the time covering, e.g., the USS Liberty incident; nevertheless, anyone can read the print outs of his telephone and wire chatter leading up to and after the 1967 Israeli War. It's clear from them that he was alone in his hopefully thinking Israel did not start that war, and that they reveal Israel has been on an expansionist policy forever: link to tau.ac.il
Yeah, botoxed, vulgar Geller should be on the E channel dissing celebrities for their bad fashion sense.
Yeah, "If" is a tiny word with a big meaning. The US foreign policy has been hijacked by Zionists since JFK was killed. No strong sign of change.
American, world politics, including the USA's, is not granular at all. It's governed by honchos who are very immature, uneducated, unwise, and given to a fairy tale narrative of the world--except big time world honchos would not be where they are if they did not know how to horse-trade and always be alert to cover their butt in interest of PR for domestic consumption. Nothing illustrates this more than the recently declassified recordings of President Johnson, re his policy in the ME: link to tau.ac.il
Thanks for the link, Donald.
Another excerpt:
"One source reported that Obama said his calls to freeze settlement expansion reflected the same positions of his four predecessors, and blamed differences with Israel in part on the quirk of history of a centrist US government and a right-wing Israeli government coexisting."
Amazing that POTUS has to justify his view of expanding settlements, by pointing to a formerly established official US POV against them. Seems this alone may convince the communities those present represented that they should vote for Mitt who will be a certain easy push-over, rather than a probable one, given a second term.
Also, under one of the pics in the article it says Obama recently stated for the record that he knows more about Judaism than any US president.
I bet that's true, except for Jimmy Carter. Or was he thinking of 20 years of fiery black sermons by his old favorite preacher?
Yeah, giving them the guns but not the bullets, so to say, German Lefty. Interesting form of reparations by the new Germany populated and run by PostWW2-born folks.
Well, yes, Nevada Ned, the US congress folk in each state always support the War business since they produce lots of jobs locally, so why not, they say to themselves, also support Israel since that's a guarantee of military jobs in their state? The increasing enmeshment of US military and IDF just makes for the usual profitable business for both those congress folks and Israel. Nobody considers anything else.
Yes, American. Recent polls do indicate what you say about German perception on the street. Also, consider that all the Germans who took any part in WW2 are either dead or retired. The government of Germany today has no Nazi past, nor do the great majority of its citizens. Yet they literally pay, and pay--to the Israeli government, most notorious in the world for accounts receivable coming in totally fungible. Every poll in the world points out that of all countries, Israel is always pinpointed as the country that has no consideration for other peoples. Duh, people really do look at deeds, not merely creeds. Well, actually, Israel's creed is itself annoying to the world, to say the least.
And there's a connection between how American politicians are handling Iran and the I-P conflict and the prevailing motivation of gross selfish materialism. Ask AIPAC.
Well now, MHughes976, that's the problem--just ask Zbigniew Brzesinski. He was interviewed early this year on the Diane Rehm Show, and again on CSPAN recently by Brian Lamb. He says how the US is handling Iran and the I-P conflict is the worse possible thing for the US and the World. The only thing equally threatening domestically and to the world --& there's a connection, is gross selfish materialism as key political motive--American cultural decline as a model for everyone.
Rachel is adored by the likes of the creator of Small Furniture and HBO's Girls. Did you see her in her semi-Arabic-US Marine stylish mode waltzing down that street in Iraq with that US soldier? She got to fire an M-16, then she bought a hand-woven Arab rug for her Mom, and went home. So cute. So feminist. So PC U could just die!
You're right about Rachel, Ellen. The creator of Small Furniture and HBO's Girls is a rabid fan of Rachel, as are her working partners. That should tell us all something. Recall when Rachel strolled around in Iraq in psuedo Arab-GI style, and she thrilled to her own firing of an M-16? She had it all filmed and shown on TV--including, near the end, where she bought a hand-made Arab rug for her mother. Just disgusting.
America as a super power was clear to the world in 1945, same as Stalin's Russia. The internal collapse of the USSR left the USA the sole super power. The deterioration of this earned status was initiated by Bush Jr when he unilaterally attacked Iraq, when his personal quest to stick it to Saddam H for "messin" with my Daddy" combined with neoconic PNAC 's agenda, which had originated as a plan to benefit Israel. Bush Jr also relearned the 1948 Truman Zionist lesson his Daddy had forgotten, and was punished for. China (& to some extent India) has been the long term happy beneficiary, along with Israel, of US foreign policy coupled with international banking, although Iran benefited for a short while too.
The US Navy is growing in Asia, not just in the ME, yet the US is greatly in debt to China, and Israel is a parasite and anchor. There's a reason why Israel is constantly courting China.
Somebody should send her an old copy of Marine officer Smedley's book, War Is A Racket, yes? And give her a copy of The Israel Lobby too.
So, a handful of Jews like Sheldon Adelson, will dictate the USA's future, hence the World's? I see no American Jew calling out Adelson on his self-proclaimed Israel First agenda--do you? Who's in the news demanding he explain his own public speech? Did anyone call out Newt, who even bragged about it?
Does anyone think, short of WW3, Dick and Jane will ever realize what the Israel Lobby is doing to America? Zbigniew Brzezinski: "Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of ...
What should we make of this, Phil, considering that originally England did not have the authority to create a Jewish state in the Palestine Mandate, and that the Balfour Declaration itself, declared without the needed authority, only envisioned a single Palestinian state with a Jewish "homeland" there as well? Not to mention, any such "homeland" for for the Jews could not in any way curb the right of the non-Jews living there? It's amazing to me that even the UN partition, giving, what 56% of the land, to Jews from all over the world, is not the most Israel may claim as internationally legal.
Now, Israel has all but 22% of the total Palestinian land. Why don't major American leaders ever point this out?