Israel & Manifest Destiny?

Israel & Manifest Destiny?

“I may say at once that if Britain and the United States emerge victorious from the war, the creation of a great Jewish state in Palestine inhabited by millions of Jews will be one of the leading features of the Peace Conference discussions.”  -  Cabinet Notes, Winston Churchill 1941

“On February 1, 1941, several days after Menachem Begin (later, the 6^th Prime Minister of Israel) took over command of IZL, it announced resumption of the struggle against Britain.  The Irgun felt that the war against the Nazis had been decided; London was now the problem.  It immediately began blowing up or attacking government immigration and income tax offices and policy buildings.  The LHI also launched a number of spectacular attacks; on August 8 they even tried to assassinate the high commissioner, MacMichael.” 

“However, the (British Agatha) operation also provoked a desire for revenge, as the IZL (Irgun Z’vai Leumi), rather ironically, took up cudgels for its sometimes enemy, the Hagannah, on July 22, 1946.  Without coordinating with the Hagannah, sappers placed a number of bomb-laden milk containers in the basement of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which served as the British military and administrative headquarters.  The resulting explosion, which demolished an entire wing of the building and killed ninety-one people – Britons, Arabs, and Jews – was the biggest terrorist action in the organizations history.”  -  

The above quotes are from:  Righteous Victims, A History of the Zionist – Arab Conflict, 1881 – 2001, by Benny Morris.

By J.M. Hamilton (4-1-2015)

Heads we write about Israel, tails we write about Mrs. Clinton…. Israel it is.

Israeli Zionist and American Revolutionaries have many things in common, but probably foremost among them is the fact that they both had to throw out British occupation, before achieving independence and statehood.  The Zionist and Americans engaging in acts of sedition against the British Crown were likely viewed as terrorist by the British constitutional monarchy; in both countries, Israel and the United States, the brave men and women who fought for independence against the English are viewed as patriots and heroes.  

Which proves the point…. One man’s freedom fighter is all too often another man’s terrorist, and vice versa.  This is not simple moral relativism, but rather, it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?  That, and as we all know, history is written by winners, in a tightly controlled narrative.

As a writer, one of the great things about growing older, particularly if you are a voracious reader and a student of history, is the wealth of information one has to draw upon.  And while there are many great young writers out there…. Writing about economics and politics without the benefit of experience or knowledge of history, for me anyway, often only tells half the story.

There’s a lot about the human condition that fascinates me, but Israel – along with foreign affairs – has always been high up on the list.  Brought up in a Semi-Evangelical household as a military brat, and with a keen interest in the study of power, Israel always attracted my attention.  As a young child, I can still remember PM Golda Meir and Mr. Moshe Dayan on the television set.  "Who’s the cool dude with the eye patch?," I wondered.  And later I learned, there was Israel’s many wars and a constant quest for survival, post U.N. partition:  The War of Independence; The Suez Crisis; The Six-Day War; The Yom Kippur War; Lebanon; and The Intifada(s), et al.  The back story: centuries of oppression and persecution, pogroms, the Holocaust, and Israel’s fight for the right to exist and for its very survival throughout the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

I’m certainly no expert, but I read quite a bit, especially about Mr. Arial Sharon:  Blessed is the Nation who has Arial Sharon as a defense minister.  Indeed.

Who were these people…? Back from the brink and against crushing odds prospering in what Mark Twain called a land that “sits in sackcloth and ashes.”  Their backs against the sea….as my mother taught me, “God’s chosen,” winning war after war.  As an American, how could you not admire Israel or their story, Zionism.  The Israeli Jews were underdogs in every sense of the word, surrounded geographically on all sides, by the Arab world.  Economically, Israel’s Marxist- Socialist beginnings (kibbutz farming and industrial output), later steering towards a capitalist and, ultimately, a mixed economy.  As a matter of history, and as a people, Israel has held the world’s attention.  As a child I read about the Jewish exodus out of Egypt, and as a young adult, I read about their 20^th Century European exodus…. For those lucky enough to survive, straight into Palestine.  Military victory after victory, defying time, history, prejudice, and her enemies, Israel and her citizens are now feared and respected (albeit grudgingly by many in the Arab world).  In the warrior nation, Israel’s Jewish children are expected to serve in the military at the age of eighteen, a civic duty that some have argued should be installed in America.

Alas, Israel a modern day Sparta.

But in the last decade or so, something has changed.  Israel is no longer an underdog; in fact, Israel – backed by the U.S. – is a regional, and perhaps global, super-power, and the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. Likud, Israel’s center right political party (not unlike America’s GOP), ruled the country throughout the 80s, was a force to be contended with throughout the 90s and the early 00s, and came back again in 2009, after PM Ariel Sharon split off in 2005 (forming the political party, Kadima).  Likud is now headed up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just won his fourth, unprecedented, term.  And something has changed in Israel, and not necessarily for the better.  Some of the change Israel is going through is robbing the country of Western sympathy and support it has long enjoyed, and yes, as reported, even support among American Jewish voters (who tend to vote for the Democratic Party).  Not so ironically, many of these changes are parallel to the American experience within the same time frame, under GOP rule.  Coincidence?

1)   At the same time America’s DoD/MIC/Surveillance State has grown beyond the control of U.S. politicians, Israel’s defense industry has grown exceptionally large, is a major employer, and is one of the largest military equipment exporters in the world.  One can argue, certainly in America, the growth of the MIC has led – just as President Eisenhower had warned – to its unseemly influence over our democracy and a more bellicose foreign policy.  

2)  Israel’s foreign policy under Likud, has gone from being on the defensive to being on the offensive, some would argue even expansionist.  Witness the growth of Israeli settlements on the West bank in occupied Palestinian lands (in violation of the U.N. position that the settlements are illegal), and Israel’s constant lobbying for a more belligerent, and militarily active, U.S. Middle East foreign policy.  Israel’s lobbying recently reached its apogee, with PM Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress.  At this speech, the Israeli PM, among other things, belittled a sitting President’s foreign policy, and specifically, attacked President Obama’s attempts at reaching a treaty preventing Iranian nuclear proliferation.  The presumed alternative to negotiations, for the GOP and the Likud, you guessed it, WAR.

3)  Israel’s economy has become controlled by oligarchs, and monopolies and oligopolies, leading to economic hardship for its citizens, and the return of the Labor Party in Israel.  The parallels to the American economy, namely too great a concentration of wealth and economic/political power into too few hands, is a threat to economic harmony and social and political stability for both America and Israel.  Indeed, in both countries, economic inequality and wealth concentration is a threat to democracy itself; and both countries suffer from a severe want of economic mobility.  Both countries have become the land of the priviledged, under conservative/right-wing rule.

4)  And speaking of threats to democracy, unprecedented sums of money are flowing into Israeli elections, much of it from outside the country.  The American corollary and U.S. right-wing support for the notion that money equal freedom of speech is obvious.

5)  As in America, Nixon’s Southern strategy immediately comes to mind, race has featured prominently in Israeli elections.  P.M. Netanyahu showed, clearly, that he was not above playing the race card when the electoral chips were down by stating that Arab voters are coming out in “droves.”  The fact that Palestinians in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West bank are disenfranchised, draws obvious comparisons to America’s Jim Crow (which is alive and well in America, thanks to the GOP and its push for voter suppression laws, and the GOP's support of the Criminal Justice Industrial Complex).

6)  The aforementiond obvious comparisons between America and Israel aside, which are harmful to both countries standing in the world and International Community as beacons of “democracy,” Israel’s political leadership, particularly right of center parties, has taking on an attitude towards the indigenous populations within Palestine that, arguably, are not dissimilar to America’s 19^th Century policies towards Native-Americans.  This America attitude culminated in the policy of Manifest Destiny, that is Native-American subjugation and elimination, and the resulting land grab.  Is Israel on the same track?  P.M. Netanyahu’s actions speak louder than words, particularly in his recent incurrisions into Gaza, and the growth of Israeli West Bank settlements; but Mr. Netanyahu finally tipped his hand in last week’s election, when he stated that he no longer believed in a two state solution.  Once the P.M. was safely re-elected, after playing both fear and race cards, he quickly backtracked from both statements – and returned to paying lip service to two states.  But few are buying what the P.M. is selling.

The path Israel and America, under Likud and GOP leadership, seems to be headed down together is not good:  right wing demagoguery, racism, pandering to baser instincts and fear, and allowing a plutocracy to run the economy and the government.  

No wonder the GOP loves King Bibi. 

Worse still the Likud’s abandonment of the two state solution brings into question Israel’s commitment to democracy.  Let’s examine exactly what a one state solution might Iook like for Israel.  

For starters (Option I), if Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza, the demographic explosion of Palestinian voters will make Israel an Arab State or well on its way to becoming one.  An outcome that Israeli Jews are not likely to desire.  

Another alternative for Israel (Option II) is to annex both Gaza and the West Bank and leave the Palestinian voters disenfranchised (not unlike the GOP’s attempts to marginalize and disenfranchise minority voters, and black citizens for over a century to the present day).  This option is neither a long term solution nor morally legitimate in the eyes of the International Community, nor is it worthy of a great democracy like Israel.

The final option (III) for a single state solution is a war of attrition, not unlike the recent military offensive waged in Gaza…. and a version of Manifest Destiny brought to Israel.  That’s right.  Bulldoze Palestinian homes in the name of fighting terror, and send the Palestinians into diaspora, upon busses with one way tickets, into the surrounding states of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.  

Under the Likud, Options II and III are already tacitly in play, have been for some time, and are not likely to let up anytime soon.  Besides the defense industry loves constant warfare, and some have even argued Gaza and the West Bank are now little more than a testing ground for the Israeli and U.S. Defense and Surveillance industries.

When you stack up the Palestinians against the Israelis, it’s almost laughable to suggest that Hammas and the Palestinian Authority are an existential threat to Israel.  What prevents one from laughing is the loss of life on both sides (particularly children).  And the fact that time and time again, just like U.S. foreign policy under the Bush Administration (W), Israel’s response to rock throwing and feeble rocket attacks launched from Gaza is, arguably, an over-reaction, highly disproportionate, with unintended consequences, and the potential for considerable blowback.  Doubt me on this… just take a look at the body counts.  

Seemingly lost upon today’s Likud leadership is their recent history.  If the Jewish right-wingers could somehow remember their roots, their ancestors own diaspora, their fore-fathers feelings of being marginalized politically and economically, and their own fight for freedom and survival against the Nazis and later, in Israel, as freedom fighters/terrorist against the British Empire…. Perhaps the Likud could find it within themselves to show a little empathy towards the Palestinian people.  After WWII, much of the world (especially the West) reacted to the atrocities committed by the Nazis by giving Israel a seemingly limitless pool of goodwill and political collateral.  But as mentioned above, today’s Israel has tremendous power over events within the Middle East, not to mention exceptional and extraordinary clout and power in Washington D.C., within the Republican Party, and in particular, in the exercise of U.S. foreign policy (the GOP has become captured on Middle East foreign policy matters by Israel and her wealthy supporters); and unfortunately, the Likud does not always exercise America’s foreign policy in the Middle East to enlightened ends, or necessarily in America’s interests (allegations of spying on U.S./Iranian nuclear talks and sharing that information with Republican Congressmen, notwithstanding).

Right-wingers within Israel should not take the seemingly limitless pool of goodwill for granted, particularly when it comes to the mistreatment of minorities, and the abuse of Israeli fear, as a means for the Likud to retain power.  (By the way, both parties, the Likud and the GOP, abuse fear as a means to distract voters from real economic problems that exist in both societies.)  Yes, the Palestinian political leadership has much to answer for; but it’s up to Israel, as the dominant and greater power, to play Statesmen, forgive, and open the door to peace (if for no other reason than for the sake of both Israeli and Palestinian children and grandchildren, and Israel's democractic future).

Israel, with the help of a powerful friend, has arrived as a world power to be admired and respected… shouldn’t it act accordingly?  Only Israel can make the peace in Palestine, or not.  As such, Mr. Netanyahu appears to be at the crossroads.

The P.M. can make a Faustian deal with Oligarchs, the MIC, and the devil, based upon endless warfare and annihilating, or marginalizing, a race of men; or the Israeli P.M. can go down in the history books, by bravely embracing peace and a two state solution.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015