Reflections on the future of Palestine and the Middle-East

Things are clearly heating up in the Middle-East again: a US-Israeli attack on Iran appears to be in the final stages of planning. Israel, which has finally clearly given up any pretense of being a civilized, never mind democratic, state, is now preventing dissident American Jews like Finkelstein or Chomsky from entering Israel. Former DIA and CIA analyst Philip Giraldi is suggesting that Israel may have to strike at Iran before August. Finally, Israeli forces have murdered humanitarian workers during what can be called either an act of piracy or war in international waters against the Freedom Flotilla and Turkey. Turkey and Israel now appear to be on collision course and it is unclear what the outcome of this latest confrontation might be.

Professor John J. Mearsheimer has recently presented an absolutely fascinating talk about the prospects for Israel and Palestine in the mid to long term. In a presentation entitled "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners" Mearsheimer's prediction is summed up in this paragraph:

"Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream".

Mearsheimer basically believes that Israeli Jews do not want a Two-State solution, and I agree with him on that point. He also believes that Israel will not be able to massacre and expel enough Palestinians and the US Jews will not support an Apartheid state in the long term. These two latter assumptions needs to be looked at in the context of the recent developments in the region,

The humiliating defeat at the hands of about 1000 second-rate Hezbollah fighters (the elite Hezbollah units were kept north of the Litani river) in 2006 left the Israeli deterrence potential in tatters. Worse, the three-week long Gaza massacre of late 2008 – early 2009 did nothing to restore the prestige (?) or credibility of the Israeli military. Neither Iran, nor Hezbollah nor Hamas have any fear of Israel and its 'massacre potential'.

Lebanon is now clearly “Hezbollah territory” and there is nothing at all Israel can do in the foreseeable future to change this. The massive US-Israeli operation “birth of a new Middle-East” to co-opt Lebanon via its “Cedar Revolution,” the Hariri murder, and the Syrian withdrawal has ended in total failure. Egypt is, for the time being, under the boot of the Mubarak dictatorship, but the regime is clearly threatened by the situation in Gaza as the population of Egypt looks in disgust at how the Egyptian government has turned into a Shin Bet franchise. There is no reason at all to suspect that the Mubarak regime is eternal. In fact, it is probably a safe bet to assume that, eventually, it will be threatened by Islamist forces.

While nobody seriously believes that Iran is developing nuclear weapons right under the nose of the IAEA and its inspectors, Iran is becoming a real regional power and it is doing so while openly defying both Israel and the USA and that is far more dangerous to the US-Israeli Empire than any nuclear weapon.

In Israel itself, a vast majority of Israeli Jews have reached what Gilad Atzmon has called a “point of no return”. 94% of them approved of the Gaza massacre and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to suspect that they are now having second thoughts. Just one look at the images of the Israeli crowds rejoicing over their “naval victory” over the Freedom Flotilla and it becomes clear that Atzmon is absolutely correct.

Unsurprisingly, Israel's public image in the world is in tatters and world opinion is finally seeing Israel for what it is: an abominable experiment in imperialism, colonialism, racism and Fascism. The more the Israelis try to “teach the Arabs a lesson” by engaging in all sorts of atrocities, the more reviled that state is.

The exception to this quasi universal disgust with Israel is, of course, the USA, where the Zionists are now in total control of the White House, Congress and the corporate media. It is hard to imagine, but the Obama administration might well turn out to be even more subservient to Israel than the Neocon controlled Bush The Lesser's administration was: Rahm Emanuel is the “new Dick Cheney” but the latter was at least only a ruthless opportunist, not an ideologue a-la-Trotsky like Emanuel clearly is.

As for US public opinion, it is wholly irrelevant on any foreign policy issues. Each time Americans vote for something, they get the exact opposite and, yet, nobody seriously protests.

How long this control of the USA by Zionist interests will last is anybody's guess, but with the current economic crisis turning into a catastrophe, time is running out for Israel and some dramatic action needs to be taken by the Israeli leaders to stop the slow-motion weakening and eventual collapse of their “ethnically pure” state. If they want to prevent this outcome, Jewish leaders need to take dramatic action very soon. Mearsheimer believes that two factors will greatly restrict their margin of freedom:

a) the Israelis cannot kill or expel all the Palestinians

b) American Jews will not support a Jewish Apartheid regime in Israel.

I think that both of these assumptions are fundamentally mistaken.

The Gaza massacre has clearly shown that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are willing to commit any number of atrocities in what they would refer to as “self-defense” or in defense of self-perceived “existential interests of the Jewish state of Israel.” Not only that, but I would argue that most Israelis see the extermination of Palestinians as a vital necessity for their own survival. Why? Because of all of the horrors they themselves have inflicted on the native Palestinians since the creation of the “Jewish state.”

This is a well-known phenomenon in history, sociology and politics. The perpetrators of atrocities project themselves onto their victims and then become terrified of possible retaliation. Having watched the IDF bombard Gaza with White Phosphorus from specially organized sighting platforms (with drinks, snacks and binoculars), the Israeli Jews expect absolutely no mercy whatsoever from the Palestinians should the latter ever become free. Just like White Americans were terrified of their Black slaves revolting and killing them, the Israeli Jews have recurrent nightmares about a “second Holocaust” happening at the hands of the native population of Palestine and the rest of the Middle-East.

Israeli Jews have shown no mercy, no humanity, towards the Palestinians whatsoever and they expect none in return (regardless of what Palestinians might or might not feel).

It is true that the IDF has not killed all Gazans yet. Not even close, in fact. But that is not due to any kind of humanity, but only to the fact that this is politically impossible, at least for the time being. But, as I have shown above, the views on Israel are becoming increasingly polarized: the world at large loathes Israel while the US Government literally worships Jews and Israelis irrespective of what the latter are actually doing.

That is what is crucial here – there is probably very little Israel can do at this point in time to ingratiate itself with most of the planet, and there is definitely nothing the Israelis can do to alienate the US elites. So the argument that the Israelis cannot commit genocide in Palestine because of the political costs of such a crime is really not true any more. The arrogance and hubris with which the Israelis have insulted the Turks over and over again clearly shows that they don't care one bit about what anybody thinks. As long as they have the USA as a protector, the Israelis think they can afford to ignore the rest of mankind.

To simply assume that the Israelis are not capable of a Rwandan-style genocide in Palestine is extremely naive, in particular if a major massacre of Palestinians is committed concurrently with a war against Iran, when all the corporate media will be watching the events in Iran and when the Israeli propaganda machine will have no problem justifying a military operation to kill and/or expel most, if not all, Palestinians under the heading of “self-defense” and “preventing another Holocaust.”

What about an overtly Apartheid-like regime in Israel. Would US Jews oppose it?

Contrary to the delusions of visceral Jew-haters, American Jews are a very diverse lot. It is enough to read all the “oy veh's!” about intermarriage in US Jewish magazines and websites to realize that the so-called Jewish community is not nearly as monolithic as it often appears to be. Still, there is a powerful tribal reflex at work in most American Jews, including non-religious ones, and the binary world view of “us and them” has left a deep mark on most American Jews. Such a view is carefully and systematically maintained by an endless stream of discussions and in the media about the “Holocaust” and “anti-Semitism”. Add to this all the propaganda about terrorism, and you get a Jewish populace that is mentally “circling the wagons”.

Of course – some American Jews see straight through that nonsense, but what happens with them next is crucial to our argument: they break off their ties with the “psychological shtetl” of Jewish tribalism and re-join the rest of mankind. They do so either on their own initiative, or because they are firmly shown to the door. Tellingly, over 7'000+ of them have already been listed on the so called SHIT list (Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening list of Jews); one can, of course, dismiss such a list as the action of loonies, which it is, but the mindset is clear – Jews critical of Israel or Zionism are traitors who need to be ostracized and expelled from the tribe.

This is thing which Mearsheimer is missing: “J Street” notwithstanding, the more American Jews emancipates themselves from the oppressive confines of their “mental shtetl” of Jewish tribalism, the less influence they will have over other American Jews. The result of this constant process of “purification” is truly frightening: the hate of the other, the paranoid fear of a 2^nd Holocaust, the active support for any and all atrocities committed in the name of Israel - all of these have now become core defining elements of the US Jewish ethos. Thus we are faced with a great paradox: for all their superficial differences, US and Israeli Jews are very much alike in one crucial aspect: they suffer from unmistakable signs of sociopathic/antisocial personality disorder.

The term sociopath (or psychopath) is mostly used as an insult, yet it has a precise medical meaning. Here is the list of the traits exhibited by psychopaths of the “aggressive narcissist” type according to the famous Hare Psychopathy Checklist:

1. Glibness/superficial charm

2. Grandiose sense of self-worth

3. Pathological lying

4. Cunning/manipulative

5. Lack of remorse or guilt

6. Shallow affect

7. Callous/lack of empathy

8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Is that not an excellent description of the Israeli ethos?

It goes without saying that this list was developed to diagnose individuals, not social or cultural groups, and the comparison can only go so far. Still, does that list not strike you as a perfect description of the Israeli mindset? Does it not also fit the US Zionists like a glove?

Still not convinced?

Check out this list of the traits of a dissocial personality disorder according to the World Health Organization:

1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.

2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.

3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.

4. Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.

5. Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.

6. Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.

7. Persistent irritability.

(Note that according to the WHO, it takes only three such traits to be diagnosed as being dissocial).

It really does not matter whether we refer to it as sociopathy, psychopathy or dissocial personality disorder. What is crucial here is to understand that collectively, if not individually, the vast majority of Israeli and American Jews clearly display unmistakable signs of a what we could call a “collective personality disorder” and that it would be therefore extremely naive to expect them to act in in accordance with what sane people would consider a rational manner.

As soon as we factor in the fact that a large majority of Israeli and American Jews display all the signs of well developed personality disorder we can make sense of behavior which otherwise would seem just bizarre, criminal or self-defeating. Take for example the fact that 94% of Israeli Jews approved of the way the Gaza massacre was executed. That is a clear example of the kind of “lack of empathy” which sociopaths or dissocial individuals display. Or take the systematic violation of all norms of international law. Is that not a case of a “gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules and obligations”. And does the famous statement of Rabbi Yaacov Perrin “"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail" not qualify as an extreme example of a “grandiose sense of self-worth?” Norman Finkelstein is quite correct when he says that Israel is a “lunatic state”. That is quite literally true.

If we now look again at Mearsheimer's two assumptions (#1: Israelis cannot kill or expel all the Palestinians and #2: American Jews will not support a Jewish Apartheid regime in Israel) we can clearly see how deeply flawed they are. While “normal” people are unlikely to engage in mass murder or support racist repression, people with a “aggressive narcissist” disorder run amok are, in fact, very likely to support both.

What this means for the Middle-East is that Israel cannot be expected to act as a “rational actor”. No matter what the Palestinians will say or do, the Israelis will view them as an existential threat. No matter what Iran does, Israel will also view it as an existential threat.

To the Israelis the notion “one man one vote”, when applied to both Jews and Palestinians, does not mean just the loss of their “identity”, but a “2^nd Holocaust”, something which they will accept under no circumstances. In their paranoid mind, to demand democracy for non-Jews in Israel is nothing less than demanding a collective suicide and that they will oppose by all, and I mean all, means.

Remember, Israeli Jews have shown no humanity at all to the Palestinians, and they are therefore quite certain that should the Palestinians ever be allowed to rule over them, even by casting an election ballot, that will result in a “2^nd Holocaust”.

Likewise, the very idea that Iran might one day, even in the distant future, acquire a nuclear weapon, even a single one, also immediately conjures images of a “2^nd Holocaust” in the Israeli collective mind. As for the argument that even if Iran acquired one or many nuclear devices and delivery vehicles, it would never dare to use them against Israel since Israel has several hundered such nuclear systems, and since the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised that the USA would “obliterate Iran” if it attacked Israel (nevermind that the USA has no treaty of any kind with Israel), this argument is worthless for the Israelis. First, because they expect the “Mullahs” of being just as crazy as they are, and second, because in their eyes a Jewish life has an almost infinite value whereas the life of a non-Jew is essentially worthless (that is what Rabbinical Judaism, that creation of the sect of the Pharisees, teaches in numerous passages of the Talmud). Mutual assured destruction just does not make sense if you assume that your opponent is utterly insane and if you believe that your opponent's life is worthless too.

Bottom line: the Israelis will attempt to either kill or expel the vast majority of Palestinians currently living in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel proper and they will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any state or force which would threaten their ability to do so.

The case of American Jews is somewhat different. Except for a very few truly crazy characters, most of them realize that they are under no personal threat whatsoever, nor is their community in the USA. The key to understanding the outlook of American Jews is to realize a simple thing: neither Judaism, nor Zionism is really central to their identity. Most American Jews are either secular or very superficially religious: only 16% attend synagogue at least once a month, only 1/6^th of them maintain a kosher diet, and even a short visit to pretty much any US Jewish website will convince you that “intermarriage” and “apostasy” are major issues in the Jewish community. Yet, 80% of US Jews also claim a “strong connection” to Judaism. What does this mean? If it's not Judaism as a religion, and if it is not Zionism (or they would be living in Israel), then what is left?

What is left is what the Israeli investigative journalist Shraga Elam calls the “Holocaust Religion”, which Gilad Atzmon describes in the following manner:

'The Holocaust' is far more than historical narrative, it indeed contains most of the essential religious elements: it has its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million', etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo, gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and now the UN). If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion is also maintained by a massive economic network and global financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la Norman Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust religion is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists' (the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them (Holocaust denial laws).

At the center of this religion's dogmatic theology is the truly terrifying notion that each “goy” is a potential Himmler and that the only thing which can prevent an otherwise almost inevitable “2^nd Holocaust” are only two things: eternal Jewish vigilance and Jewish power.

This Holocaust religion is what is really at the core of identity of US Jews and its power is such that it can elicit the most contradictory behavior from otherwise very sane American Jews. A perfect example of the latter is the case of the only socialist in Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who has had a long track of rather progressive views, but who actually voted for a resolution supporting the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006. This resolution actually included the following words:

“...recognizes Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.“

How does a putative “socialist” suddenly find a way to praise “ Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss”?! The fear of AIPAC cannot explain that (Sanders openly opposed the war on Iraq). Nor is Sanders known to be a religious Jew, or a big supporter of Zionism. And yet, on this crucial vote, he voted against everything he supposedly stands for. Amazing, no?

In a tragic sense, the case of Sander is emblematic of most US Jews. Yes, most of them are liberals (at least in the US meaning of the word), and most of them care about human and civil rights. But when it comes to Israel, they are either supporters or, at best, they remain strangely silent, looking away from what is happening there.

It is quite true that the mass murder in Lebanon in 2006, followed by the mass murder in Gaza in 2008-2009, the current blockade of Gaza and the daily systematic and wholesale violation of basic human rights in occupied Palestine are having an impact on many American Jews¹. However, as I mentioned earlier, most of them would rather leave than “fight from within” and face the hateful mob and its accusations of being a “moser”, a “meshumad” or their modern and secular equivalent: a “self-hating Jew”. At a time when a Zionist with stellar credentials like Richard Goldstone can be called an “anti-Semite” by no less than an Israeli Minister, who would want to speak up against Zionist crimes? Sure, courageous dissidents like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Philip Weiss or Max Blumenthal will stand up and denounce the likes of Dershowitz or Lieberman, but most will just quietly leave in disgust.

For most US Jews the unconditional support for Israel and its policies is not a political choice, it is an existential issue, almost a soteriological one: be it because Israeli Jews need to be saved from the evil Arabs and Muslims worldwide, or because Israel needs to be preserved as a “Jewish state” in case the local goyim bare their fangs and re-start the gas chambers – the support for Israel is not something which US Jews are ever going to seriously reconsider.

Paradoxically, the fact that Israel has become a pariah state and that Zionism is, yet again, seen as a violent and ugly form or racism (UN resolutions abrogating each other notwithstanding), makes diaspora Jews not less, but even more pro-Israeli. They see the worldwide opposition to Israeli polices and Zionist ideas as a clear sign of a resurgent “new anti-Semitism”. Just like in Bertold Brecht's nightmares, most Jews sincerely believe that “"The belly is still fertile that gave birth to the vile beast"² – and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change that. Since Israel has no friends (well, besides the USA, of course, and some politicians in Europe), then who will help it?

Botton line: hearing the distant voice of Hillel the Elder saying “If I am not for myself, who will be? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?" most diaspora Jews will also “circle the wagon” and defend Israel no matter what, quite literally.

The situation for Israel is deteriorating very rapidly: Israel is losing on all fronts simultaneously: military, political, demographic, public image, social and economic – all the signs of a soon-to-come Götterdämmerung (“Teufeldämmerung” ?) are at hand and Ahmadinejad is absolutely correct when he says that Israel “is aware that it has reached the end of the line and will soon fade away from the earth”.

Take for example the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions): while its economic impact on Israel is negligible, its public-relations effect is huge: by raising the comparison between Israel and South African Apartheid, the BDS movement is achieving the delegitimization of the “Jewish state” which the Zionists greatly fear. Why? Because the real effect of the BDS movement is to make the unconditional support for Israel very costly for European and US politicians. Not now, not yet – but in the long run, support for Israel will become as socially unacceptable as the support for Apartheid South Africa.

With the current ruling elites in Europe and the USA, Israel is quite safe since these elites will always put their subservience to Israel above the will of their peoples. So for the immediate and near future, this diffuse danger will not materialize into a specific threat. But combined with a severe economic crisis, this frustration might just combine with a general alienation from the ruling elites and result in an eventual overthrow of the Zionist ruling elite. That is the real danger: not the elites turning away from their unconditional support for Israel, but these elites being overthrown in the course of a collapse of the socio-political system currently in power. In other words, not a change in government – which happens in the West on a regular basis, but a change in regime – something which has never happened in the history of the United States.

This is one of the reasons why the ruling elite in the USA is so terrified of the 9/11 Truth movement. If the general public would somehow truly become aware of the fact that 9/11 was, indeed an “inside job” this would delegitimize not only the current government or the Administration of George Bush Jr., but the entire structure of power. And once that regime crumbles, the blowback against the decades of abuse, exploitation and deception of the American people by the Zionists will be truly massive. This is the “big fear” behind all the curtailment of civil rights in the post 9/11 USA.

The regimes in Israel and the USA have gone from allies to accomplices and they are locked together into a “do or die” dynamic in which both regimes need to either maintain total control over as much of our planet as possible or perish. The irony, of course, is that this misguided “survival strategy” puts these two regimes or, should I say, this single bi-national regime, on a collision course with the rest of the planet. Bush's idiotic slogan about “you are either with us or against us” is now becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and it appears that nobody, besides a small plutocratic elite, is with the USA and Israel.

Barring some totally unforeseen development, we should expect that neither Israel nor the USA will in any way soften or otherwise alter their course. Israel will pursue a mix of two fundamental policies: external aggression and internal slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians. At the same time, both the USA and Israel will become weaker and weaker, not only in military terms, but also in political terms. This will lead them into a desperate attempt to “restore order” and go on the offensive against their enemies.

An attack against Iran is therefore inevitable. As is the use of nuclear weapons by Israel at some point in time. And even though both of these lunacies will fail to accomplish their stated objectives, both of them are inevitable simply because these are all the cards left in the US-Israeli Empire's hands.

On the Palestinians side the only viable strategy is extremely simple: the Palestinians need to return to the “three no's” of the 1967 Khartoum Resolution: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it." Furthermore, at least the third of the three no's should be extended to the USA itself (what is the point of “negotiating” with Rahm Emanuel and his minions?).

The Palestinians simply have no other option. Peace with those who see your extermination as a vital necessity and who view your very existence as an “existential threat” is pointless. “Recognizing Israel” simply means agreeing to the genocide of Palestinians. And, needless to say, there is absolutely nothing to negotiate about. Sadly, the situation in the Middle-East is one example of something exceedingly rare in international relations: a real zero-sum game in which any gain by one side entails a loss for the other side. In such a situation there is only one possible outcome: a complete and comprehensive victory by one side over the other.

On one side, we have the last openly racist state on the planet which has also succeeded in taking all the key power centers of a superpower like the USA and on the other – we have the rest of the planet and the very notions of decency, humanity, democracy, freedom, truth, justice and peace. In a deep sense, we are all Palestinians and we must globalize the Intifada. And, of course, we will prevail simply because what Israel stands for is inherently inhuman and evil and nothing can be truly built on evil. The Soviet Union had far more nuclear weapons than Israel will ever have, yet it was defeated by the combined action of innumerable factors which all contributed to its downfall. The same thing will happen to the “Jewish state of Israel”. One need not be steeped in the Three Laws of Dialectics to realize how unstable the current situation is: the writing is on the wall for Israel as a “Jewish state” with all that this abominable concept entails. Just like all the other abominable and anti-human ideologies which caused the deaths of millions of people in the 20^th century, Zionism will eventually defeats itself and cause the collapse of the nations which embraced it.

The Saker

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1 Hardcore Jew-haters and assorted racists can deny that ad nauseam, but Jews are humans “just like us”: they have the same basic conscience (what the Church Fathers called the “Law of the Heart”), the same inner sense of right and wrong, and to assume otherwise is mimicking the worst racism of the Pharisees, Talmudists and Kabbalists who believe that God had created “real humans” and “apparent humans”. From a Christian perspective, to deny the common humanity of all races (assuming there is such a thing as a 'race', which I personally doubt very much) is a modern version of the Iconoclast heresy: a denial of the image of God in all humans (Christianity see all humans as living icons in image, but not in likeness. [I apologize for this digression which I include solely for the benefit of those who daydream about some “Western Christian civilization” while they themselves subscribe to racist views which are nothing short of a grievous heresy from a traditional Christian point of view].

2“Der Bauch, aus dem das Boese kroch, ist fruchtbar noch”

"The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners"

A lecture by Professor John J. Mearsheimer

Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy.

Israel's Big and Small Apartheids: Meaning of a Jewish State

By Jonathan Cook via Palestine Chronicle

Below is the text of a talk delivered to the fifth Bilin international conference for Palestinian popular resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bilin on April 21.

Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism. I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it actually gets off extremely lightly: that many features of the Israeli polity would be considered exceptional or extraordinary in any other democratic state.

That is not surprising because, as I will argue, Israel is neither a liberal democracy nor even a “Jewish and democratic state”, as its supporters claim. It is an apartheid state, not only in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also inside Israel proper. Today, in the occupied territories, the apartheid nature of Israeli rule is irrefutable -- if little mentioned by Western politicians or the media. But inside Israel itself, it is largely veiled and hidden. My purpose today is to try to remove the veil a little.

I say “a little”, because I would need far more than the time allotted to me to do justice to this topic. There are, for example, some 30 laws that explicitly discriminate between Jews and non-Jews -- another way of referring to the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinian and supposedly enjoy full citizenship. There are also many other Israeli laws and administrative practices that lead to an outcome of ethnic-based segregation even if they do not make such discrimination explicit.

So instead of trying to rush through all these aspects of Israeli apartheid, let me concentrate instead on a few revealing features, issues I have reported on recently.

First, let us examine the nature of Israeli citizenship.

A few weeks ago I met Uzi Ornan, an 86-year-old professor from the Technion university in Haifa, who has one of the few ID cards in Israel stating a nationality of “Hebrew”. For most other Israelis, their cards and personal records state their nationality as “Jewish” or “Arab”. For immigrants whose Jewishness is accepted by the state but questioned by the rabbinical authorities, some 130 other classifications of nationality have been approved, mostly relating to a person’s religion or country of origin. The only nationality you will not find on the list is “Israeli”. That is precisely why Prof Ornan and two dozen others are fighting through the courts: they want to be registered as “Israelis”. It is a hugely important fight -- and for that reason alone they are certain to lose. Why?

Far more is at stake than an ethnic or national label. Israel excludes a nationality of “Israeli” to ensure that, in fulfilment of its self-definition as a “Jewish state”, it is able to assign superior rights of citizenship to the collective “nation” of Jews around the globe than to the body of actual citizens in its territory, which includes many Palestinians. In practice it does this by creating two main classes of citizenship: a Jewish citizenship for “Jewish nationals” and an Arab citizenship for “Arab nationals”. Both nationalities were effectively invented by Israel and have no meaning outside Israel.

This differentiation in citizenship is recognised in Israeli law: the Law of Return, for Jews, makes immigration all but automatic for any Jew around the world who wishes it; and the Citizenship Law, for non-Jews, determines on any entirely separate basis the rights of the country’s Palestinian minority to citizenship. Even more importantly, the latter law abolishes the rights of the Palestinian citizens’ relatives, who were expelled by force in 1948, to return to their homes and land. There are, in other words, two legal systems of citizenship in Israel, differentiating between the rights of citizens based on whether they are Jews or Palestinians.

That, in itself, meets the definition of apartheid, as set out by the United Nations in 1973: “Any legislative measures or other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups.” The clause includes the following rights: “the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”

Such separation of citizenship is absolutely essential to the maintenance of Israel as a Jewish state. Were all citizens to be defined uniformly as Israelis, were there to be only one law regarding citizenship, then very dramatic consequences would follow. The most significant would be that the Law of Return would either cease to apply to Jews or apply equally to Palestinian citizens, allowing them to bring their exiled relatives to Israel – the much-feared Right of Return. In either a longer or shorter period, Israel’s Jewish majority would be eroded and Israel would become a binational state, probably with a Palestinian majority.

There would be many other predictable consequences of equal citizenship. Would the Jewish settlers, for example, be able to maintain their privileged status in the West Bank if Palestinians in Jenin or Hebron had relatives inside Israel with the same rights as Jews? Would the Israeli army continue to be able to function as an occupation army in a properly democratic state? And would the courts in a state of equal citizens be able to continue turning a blind eye to the brutalities of the occupation? In all these cases, it seems extremely unlikely that the status quo could be maintained.

In other words, the whole edifice of Israel’s apartheid rule inside Israel supports and upholds its apartheid rule in the occupied territories. They stand or fall together.

Next, let us look at the matter of land control.

Last month I met an exceptional Israeli Jewish couple, the Zakais. They are exceptional chiefly because they have developed a deep friendship with a Palestinian couple inside Israel. Although I have reported on Israel and Palestine for many years, I cannot recall ever before meeting an Israeli Jew who had a Palestinian friend in quite the way the Zakais do.

True, there are many Israeli Jews who claim an “Arab” or “Palestinian” friend in the sense that they joke with the guy whose hummus shop they frequent or who fixes their car. There are also Israeli Jews -- and they are an extremely important group -- who stand with Palestinians in political battles such as those here in Bilin or in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. At these places, Israelis and Palestinians have, against the odds, managed to forge genuine friendships that are vital if Israel’s apartheid rule is to be defeated.

But the Zakais’ relationship with their Bedouin friends, the Tarabins, is not that kind of friendship. It is not based on, or shaped by, a political struggle, one that is itself framed by Israel’s occupation; it is not a self-conscious friendship; and it has no larger goal than the relationship itself. It is a friendship -- or at least it appeared that way to me -- of genuine equals. A friendship of complete intimacy. When I visited the Zakais, I realised what an incredibly unusual sight that is in Israel.

The reason for the very separate cultural and emotional worlds of Jewish and Palestinian citizens in Israel is not difficult to fathom: they live in entirely separate physical worlds. They live apart in segregated communities, separated not through choice but by legally enforceable rules and procedures. Even in the so-called handful of mixed cities, Jews and Palestinians usually live apart, in distinct and clearly defined neighbourhoods. And so it was not entirely surprising that the very issue that brought me to the Zakais was the question of whether a Palestinian citizen is entitled to live in a Jewish community.

The Zakais want to rent to their friends, the Tarabins, their home in the agricultural village of Nevatim in the Negev -- currently an exclusively Jewish community. The Tarabins face a serious housing problem in their own neighbouring Bedouin community. But what the Zakais have discovered is that there are overwhelming social and legal obstacles to Palestinians moving out the ghettoes in which they are supposed to live. Not only is Nevatim’s elected leadership deeply opposed to the Bedouin family entering their community, but so also are the Israeli courts.

Nevatim is not exceptional. There are more than 700 similar rural communities -- mostly kibbutzim and moshavim -- that bar non-Jews from living there. They control most of the inhabitable territory of Israel, land that once belonged to Palestinians: either refugees from the 1948 war; or Palestinian citizens who have had their lands confiscated under special laws.

Today, after these confiscations, at least 93 per cent of Israel is nationalised -- that is, it is held in trust not for Israel’s citizens but for world Jewry. (Here, once again, we should note one of those important consequences of the differentiated citizenship we have just considered.)

Access to most of this nationalised land is controlled by vetting committees, overseen by quasi-governmental but entirely unaccountable Zionist organisations like the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund. Their role is to ensure that such communities remain off-limits to Palestinian citizens, precisely as the Zakais and Tarabins have discovered in the case of Nevatim. The officials there have insisted that the Palestinian family has no right even to rent, let alone buy, property in a “Jewish community”. That position has been effectively upheld by Israel’s highest court, which has agreed that the family must submit to a vetting committee whose very purpose is to exclude them.

Again, the 1973 UN Convention on the “crime of apartheid” is instructive: it includes measures “designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups … [and] the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof.”

If Jewish and Palestinian citizens have been kept apart so effectively -- and a separate education system and severe limits on interconfessional marriage reinforce this emotional and physical segregation -- how did the Zakais and Tarabins become such close friends?

Their case is an interesting example of serendipity, as I discovered when I met them. Weisman Zakai is the child of Iraqi Jewish parents who immigrated to the Jewish state in its early years. When he and Ahmed Tarabin met as boys in the 1960s, hanging out in the markets of the poor neighbouring city of Beersheva, far from the centre of the country, they found that what they had in common trumped the formal divisions that were supposed to keep them apart and fearful. Both speak fluent Arabic, both were raised in an Arab culture, both are excluded from Jewish Ashkenazi society, and both share a passion for cars.

In their case, Israel’s apartheid system failed in its job of keeping them physically and emotionally apart. It failed to make them afraid of, and hostile to, each other. But as the Zakais have learnt to their cost, in refusing to live according to the rules of Israel’s apartheid system, the system has rejected them. The Zakais are denied the chance to rent to their friends, and now live as pariahs in the community of Nevatim.

Finally, let us consider the concept of “security” inside Israel.

As I have said, the apartheid nature of relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens is veiled in the legal, social and political spheres. It does not mirror the “petty apartheid” that was a feature of the South African brand: the separate toilets, park benches and buses. But in one instance it is explicit in this petty way -- and this is when Jews and Palestinians enter and leave the country through the border crossings and through Ben Gurion international airport. Here the façade is removed and the different status of citizenship enjoyed by Jews and Palestinians is fully on show.

That lesson was learnt by two middle-aged Palestinian brothers I interviewed this month. Residents of a village near Nazareth, they had been life-long supporters of the Labor party and proudly showed me a fading picture of them hosting a lunch for Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. But at our meeting they were angry and bitter, vowing they would never vote for a Zionist party again.

Their rude awakening had come three years ago when they travelled to the US on a business trip with a group of Jewish insurance agents. On the flight back, they arrived at New York’s JFK airport to see their Jewish colleagues pass through El Al’s security checks in minutes. They, meanwhile, spent two hours being interrogated and having their bags minutely inspected.

When they were finally let through, they were assigned a female guard whose job was to keep them under constant surveillance -- in front of hundreds of fellow passengers -- till they boarded the plane. When one brother went to the bathroom without first seeking permission, the guard berated him in public and her boss threatened to prevent him from boarding the plane unless he apologised. This month the court finally awarded the brothers $8,000 compensation for what it called their “abusive and unnecessary” treatment.

Two things about this case should be noted. The first is that the El Al security team admitted in court that neither brother was deemed a security risk of any sort. The only grounds for the special treatment they received was their national and ethnic belonging. It was transparently a case of racal profiling.

The second thing to note is that their experience is nothing out of the ordinary for Palestinian citizens travelling to and from Israel. Similar, and far worse, incidents occur every day during such security procedures. What was exceptional in this case was that the brothers pursued a time-consuming and costly legal action against El Al.

They did so, I suspect, because they felt so badly betrayed. They had made the mistake of believing the hasbara (propaganda) from Israeli politicians of all stripes who declare that Palestinian citizens can enjoy equal status with Jewish citizens if they are loyal to the state. They assumed that by being Zionists they could become first-class citizens. In accepting this conclusion, they had misunderstood the apartheid reality inherent in a Jewish state.

The most educated, respectable and wealthy Palestinian citizen will always fare worse at the airport security check than the most disreputable Jewish citizen, or the one who espouses extremist opinions or even the Jewish citizen with a criminal record.

Israel’s apartheid system is there to maintain Jewish privilege in a Jewish state. And at the point where that privilege is felt most viscerally by ordinary Jews to be vulnerable, in the life and death experience of flying thousands of feet above the ground, Palestinian citizens must be shown their status as outsider, as the enemy, whoever they are and whatever they have, or have not, done.

Apartheid rule, as I have argued, applies to Palestinians in both Israel and the occupied territories. But is not apartheid in the territories much worse than it is inside Israel? Should we not concern ourselves more with the big apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza than this weaker apartheid? Such an argument demonstrates a dangerous misconception about the indivisible nature of Israel’s apartheid towards Palestinians and about its goals.

Certainly, it is true that apartheid in the territories is much more aggressive than it is inside Israel. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the apartheid under occupation is much less closely supervised by the Israeli civilian courts than it is in Israel. You can, to put it bluntly, get away with much more here. The second, and more significant, reason, however, is that the Israeli system of apartheid in the occupied territories is forced to be more aggressive and cruel -- and that is because the battle is not yet won here. The fight of the occupying power to steal your resources -- your land, water and labour -- is in progress but the outcome is still to be decided. Israel is facing the considerable pressures of time and a fading international legitimacy as it works to take your possessions from you. Every day you resist makes that task a little harder.

In Israel, by contrast, apartheid rule is entrenched -- it achieved its victory decades ago. Palestinian citizens have third or fourth class citizenship; they have had almost all of their land taken from them; they are allowed to live only in their ghettoes; their education system is controlled by the security services; they can work in few jobs other than those Jews do not want; they have the vote but cannot participate in government or effect any political change; and so on.

Doubtless, a related fate is envisioned for you too. The veiled apartheid facing Palestinians inside Israel is the blueprint for a veiled -- and more legitimate -- kind of apartheid being planned for Palestinians in the occupied territories, at least those who are allowed to remain in their Bantustans. And for this very reason, exposing and defeating the apartheid inside Israel is vital to the success of resisting the apartheid that has taken root here.

That is why we must fight Israeli apartheid wherever it is found -- in Jaffa or Jerusalem, in Nazareth or Nablus, in Beersheva or Bilin. It is the only struggle that can bring justice to the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Long live Palestine! Long live Gaza!

Not every Zionist is Jewish,
and not every Jew is a Zionist.

This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,
it's about time we globalized the intifāḍa (rebellion),
listen close I've got six words for Obama,
long live Palestine,
long live Gaza.
Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,
it's about time we globalized the intifāḍa (rebellion),
listen close I've got six words for Obama,
long live Palestine, long live Gaza.

The government supports the people of the UK didn't,
Zionism is not compatible with Judaism - the hijacked faith,
the state is misrepresenting,
Israel equals misplacement and ethnic cleansing.
I know I'm on a list, for being more verbal, curse every Zionist since Theodor Herzl,
Balfour was not a wise man,
shame on Rothschild,
between them the monster they created has gone wild.

Tears to laughter,
our children don't fear disaster,
living near the master,
clear the facts,
hear the casket,
we rap and we die from bombastic times,
?????
summer days in the thunder blaze,
they merk their dreams like Theodor Herzl screams,
and the UN and 48 ????
from mothers, daughters,
sons martyred and empty fathers.

Even though all they do on TV is lie,
I was watching the news,
you can see the tears of mothers falling on earth,
the kids are sweet,
show them that they take the hands of kids who just learnt how to talk and..load it...shoot,
this is what I saw on the news.

Ba eenka ma to televesion hamash mishinan doroogh migan,
Dastahm akhbar mididam,
Ke chiz ha ro joor haro ashkahey madararo zameen mirizan,
Bache ha sheerinan,
Beheshoon majrobati ke bacheyi ke tazeh yad gerefteh ra bareh o tastesho migiran...Por karde...va... tirizad,
Chand vaght pish sanehayeh eineh een to akhbar mididam..ahdaro chididam.

Israel is a terrorist state,
the evidence is quite obvious,
war criminals using lethal weapons like white phosphorus,
burns your flesh to the bone,
and if you happen to live,
you'll be left infected with cancer,
you'll curse the fact that you did,
forgive me if I wish to say fate on those Israelis,
responsible for killing all those innocent little babies,
I studied the Torah and learnt by their own admission,
Israel's actions are not kosher in their own religion.

The Devils got an unholy plan for the Holy Land,
so I hope my Qurān,
cuts the power in the other hand,
damn,
no oasis just bloodstained sands,
Settlements settin up to eliminate child, woman and man..
no such thing as the Middle East,
brother they deceiving you,
no matter where you stand there's always something to the east of you,
so whether it's the Mossad or the FBI policing you,
it's all one struggle till the final breath is leavin you

Israel Condemned by Human Rights Council in Goldstone Vote

UN Watch, 25 March 2010

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted the Goldstone resolution this morning, with 29 in favor, 6 against and 11 abstentions. The resolution, “Follow-up to the report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” was submitted by Sudan on behalf of the Arab Group, Pakistan on behalf of the OIC and Palestine. The countries voting against the resolution were: the Netherlands, the United States, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy and the Ukraine. Among the abstentions were the United Kingdom, France and Belgium.

The resolution reiterates the recommendations of the Goldstone report and calls for the creation of an assessment committee to oversee implementation of the report’s recommendations. It also creates an escrow fund for Palestinian victims of alleged Israeli violations, ignoring the proposal by Switzerland to create a fund for victims on both sides of the conflict. The Netherlands, Hungary and Slovakia called the fund “premature” given that investigations into alleged violations have not yet been completed.

“This resolution offers no real hope for Israelis or Palestinians,” said Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva Aharon Leshno Yaar. He called the resolution a “duplication” of last month’s General Assembly resolution on the Goldstone report.

Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Ibrahim Khraishi challenged the statement made by Israel and called for follow-up reports by the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Amb. Eileen Donahoe of the United States called for a two-state solution, adding that “the best way to avoid abuses in the Arab-Israeli conflict is to end it.” Calling for a vote, the United States urged other members “to join us in voting no.” The vote follows four sequential condemnatory resolutions against Israel, all passed with large majorities yesterday afternoon.

US stands alone in Human Rights Council votes on Israel

UN Watch, 24 March 2010

The UN Human Rights Council has roundly condemned the State of Israel in resolutions tabled under the highly controversial agenda item 7, “Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories.” Five resolutions have been tabled against Israel, amounting to the greatest number of condemnatory resolutions on a single country.

The first resolution, "Human Rights in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” was adopted by a wide majority, with 31 countries in favor, 1 against and 15 abstentions. The United States was the only member to vote against the resolution, the European Union jointly abstaining.

The Council voted nearly unanimously in favor of “Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” with 45 countries voting in favor and only the United States voting against the resolution. No countries chose to abstain.

On the resolution, “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan,” 46 countries voted to condemn Israel, while the United States alone voted against the resolution. No countries chose to abstain.

On the resolution presented by Pakistan, “The grave human rights violations by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” the Council voted 34 in favor, 9 against, 7 abstaining.

On the Goldstone resolution, “Follow-up to the report of the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” the Council was not able to complete voting due to time restrictions and will resume tomorrow at 10am. The resolution reiterates the recommendations of the Goldstone report, and includes new recommendations to establish an Ad Hoc Committee to oversee implementation.

ZOG's committment to genocide in Palestine: "unwavering, unbreakable, unshakable"

Yesterday I posted a recent AIPAC statement in which the Israel Lobby in essence demanded that the Obama administration desist from its complaints about the recent humiliation of VP Biden in Israel. Sure enough, the entire US ruling class immediately jumped to attention. Take, for example, the statements of US Congress members which immediately issued statement of loyalty to the Israel Lobby. As for the Executive Branch - we all heard their obsequious reply about the (legally non-existing) "alliance" with Israel: unwavering, unbreakable, and unshakable. It really looked like they were all reading from the same talking points.

There simply can be no doubt about the fact that the United States have been taken over by what some call a "Zionist Occupation Government". I know, I know, that sounds like the kid of words which folks like David Duke or the Aryan Nation might use in one of their speeches. So what?! If tomorrow David Duke or the Aryan nation declare that the earth is round and that 2+2=4 are we going to reject that? Of course not! Rejecting an argument (or, in this case, the use of an acronym) because it is used by somebody we dislike is a typical example of the ad-hominem fallacy. Instead we should ask ourselves: does the acronym "ZOG" make sense, yes or no?

That the US ruling elite, whether Jewish or not, is Zionist is beyond doubt. Heck - every single US politician is more than happy to proclaim it.

Is the Zionist power in the USA an "occupation"? I would argue that it is, if only because this power structure totally ignores the will the the American people (shown in numerous opinion polls and elections). It is important to remember that neither the American people nor Congress have EVER been given a single chance to vote on ANY alliance or treaty with Israel. NEVER. How is that this fundamentally illegal "alliance" ever became "unwavering, unbreakable, and unshakable" if not by the simple fact that this is an *occupation* government?

Are the Zionists a "government"? Well, of course they are, at least since the election of Bill Clinton (before Clinton and Dubya, it was the old "Anglo" guard which ruled the USA). There is no non-Zionist government in the USA, so speaking of ZOG is quite appropriate indeed.

The entire "Biden humiliation" episode illustrates a simple point: the US and Israel are not "allies". The USA is an Israeli colony, every bit as occupied as the Palestinian lands. The main difference between these two occupations is primarily in the method used: bullets and bombs in Palestine, corporate media and money in the USA. Otherwise, there is a lot in common between the Palestinian Authority and the US Nomenklatura such as, for example, its endemic corruption and its willingness to oppress its own population.

In this context, it is worth looking at the entire "Obama peace initiative" canard. What are they talking about, really?

Officially, they are talking about the idea of the USA taking the needed steps to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority around a negotiating table. Calling things by their real names this means that one Israeli colony (the USA) is making "efforts" to bring another Israeli colony (the PA) and their colonial master (Israel) to sit down and "negotiate". Negotiate about what?! Since when does the master need one slave to "negotiate" with another slave? Since when do masters negotiate with slaves anyway?

As for Hamas, nobody - not Israel, not the PA nor, of course, the USA - is even floating the idea around of negotiating with it. Why would anybody want to negotiate with the duly elected representative of the Palestinian people?

We also hear a lot about the merits of the "one state solution" vs. the "two state solution" and, at least officially, Israel and its colonial subjects (the USA and the PA) support the "two state solution". In reality, of course, both Israel or the USA totally oppose the "two state solution" and their true stance is clearly shown in their yearly opposition to the annual UN Resolution on the "Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine" in which the entire world demands the implementation of a "two state solution" and which is always opposed by Israel, the USA and a couple of South Pacific nations (and sometimes an "Echelon-member" state). Israel and the USA are also vehemently opposed to a "one state solution" as this would wholly negate the "Jewish state" nature of Israel.

So what do the Zionists (in Israel or the USA) really want? Here is how the Israeli academic Arnon Soffer summarized Israel's "solution":

"We will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won't allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what's waiting for them. Second of all, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day (...) If we don't kill, we will cease to exist"

That's is pretty clear, no? If the Israelis want to keep an ethnically/religiously "pure" Jewish state, they have three options for the Palestinian problem: a) convert them all (not going to happen, nobody proposes that either) or b) expel them all (not going to happen, but has plenty of advocates) or c) kill them all.

Obviously, few people dare to openly advocate the complete genocide of the Palestinian people, but that idea in inherently contained in, and forms part of, the Zionist project and ideology.

Once this is clearly understood, we can immediately see what the "peace negotiations" are all about. In fact, they can only be about one thing: the timetable and modalities of the genocide of the Palestinian people. And that is what the Obama Administration committed to in a "unwavering, unbreakable, unshakable" manner: a racist genocide in Palestine. Biden and Hillary included, of course.

7 years after the murder of Rachel Corrie her family takes the state of Israel to court

7 Years after the murder of Rachel Corrie her family heads to Israel to bring a wrongful death lawsuit against Israeli government.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"

Gospel according to the Apostle and Evangelist Saint John the Theologian

Great Game playoff: Russia/Turkey vs Palestine/Israel

In Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams the new line-up of the players in the Great Game was set out. Here, Eric Walberg considers the implications for the Middle East.

A vital playing field in today’s Great Game is Palestine/Israel, where again there is a tentative meeting of political minds between Russia and Turkey. In defiance of the US and much of Europe, both endorsed the Goldstone report into atrocities committed during Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008, where 100 Palestinians died for every Israeli casualty. Neither government is captive to Israel in the way European and US governments are, though they both have important economic relations with Israel.

Israeli dissident writer Israel Shamir commended the Turkish leaders at a conference in Ankara in December: "Your president, Mr Gul, said a few days ago to our president, Mr Peres, that he will not visit Israel while the siege of Gaza continues. Turkey is no longer an American colony. You stopped joint air force exercises with Israel and the US. You expressed your clear anger over the horrors of Gaza. Now you pay more attention to the area where you live; you play an important role already and are destined to play an even greater role. So much depends on you! We feel it every day in Palestine."

He called on Turkey, as inheritor of the Ottoman-era responsibility for Palestine, to follow the lead of the Spanish and British judges who issued arrest warrants for Chilean General Pinochet and Israeli prime ministerTzipi Livni for murder, and issue an arrest warrant for the infamous Captain R, accused of murdering a Palestinian child Iman Al-Hams, but feted in Israel as a hero. "A Turkish warrant for his arrest should await him wherever he goes," just as "according to Israeli law, if a Turk does wrong to a Jew in Turkey, he may be snatched, arrested, tried and punished in Israel. Turkey should introduce a symmetrical law, covering offences against Palestinians who otherwise are not protected by law."

Though unlikely, this would be wildly popular in Turkey. Similarly, unlike brainwashed Westerners fed daily doses of pro-Israeli media, Turks and most Russians have no use for the Zionist project. True, over one million Russians took up the tantalising offer of instant Israeli citizenship in search of a better life, qualifying as Jewish merely via marriage or with as little as one grandparent racially Jewish. But, despite the chauvinism of the Russian-Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, many of these Russian Israelis, too, have no use for the Zionist project, with its innate racism, some even marrying Palestinians. Many are returning to Russia, bitter at the way they are treated by sabra (Jews born in Israel). The natural sympathy of these and non-Jewish Russians is for the Palestinians.

The Soviet Union was one of the first states to recognise the state of Palestine after the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, and Russia has maintained that position. As Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said during a visit to Moscow last year, the “fact there is a Palestinian embassy in Moscow is a sign of the strength of our relationship.” Visiting Russia a week after the Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, he found the Russian position on the peace process and the question of Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories unchanged.

As a member of the so-called “quartet” of negotiators (along with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations), Russia has stuck to the principles of the “road map” for peace, which requires Israel to freeze expansion of settlements in the occupied territories as a condition of further talks.

Russia has 16 million Muslims, about 12 per cent of the population, and Western-style Islamophobia -- and, the flip side, Judophilia -- is largely absent. It recently attended the Organisation of Islamic Conference as an observer and expressed interest in joining. The problem with asserting a clear policy towards Muslim countries, including Turkey, is of course the tragedy of Chechnia and the persistence of Islamist terrorism within Russia, resulting in anti-Muslim sentiment in Russian cities, which thrive on cheap labour from the “stans” and where much of the small-scale trade has been run by Chechens and other "blacks".

Shamir explains: "In Europe, if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia, Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church, or of Russian nationalism. The most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists."

As is the case in all countries of importance, the Zionists have their lobby in Russia too. Yevgenny Satanovsky (that's right), the president of the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, using the royal we, argues, “For us, there is no distinction between ‘rebels’ and ‘terrorists,’ as there is in Europe. They’re all part of the same jihad, and on this we agree with Israel.” But while busy promoting anti-Muslim sentiment among Russians, he fails to mention the support that his colleagues give to those very forces.

The Zionist footprint in Chechnia was hinted at during the scandal surrounding the murder of Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2008. In a Le Carre twist, Litvinenko converted to Islam on his deathbed, attended by exiled Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev and exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose Zionist credentials are well known. While the nature and extent of Mossad activity in the Caucasus is impossible to know for sure, there is no doubt that abetting terrorists is a useful way for Israel to apply pressure on the Russian government, and that Russian security forces do their best to keep track of it.

Turkey, Russia and Palestine all share a common geopolitical threat in the form of US and Israeli global plans, from NATO expansion eastward and US-Israeli plans to wage war on Iran, to the ongoing US-Israeli colonisation of what remains of Palestine. Just as Russia must struggle against NATO expansion eastward, intended to encircle and contain Russia, "if the US and Israel do take Iran, Turkey will be encircled and cut off. The fate of Palestine also depends on the fate of Tehran," writes Shamir.

Shamir congratulated the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) on its resounding reelection in 2007: "The East returns to God, and finds its own way. Istanbul has followed Gaza: the AKP-ruled Turkey will be a friend to Hamas-ruled Palestine, to Islamic Iran, to Orthodox Greece and Russia, to the religious anti-occupation forces of nearby Iraq. She will again take her place of pride as the centrepiece of the Eastern mosaic, while its pro-American and God-hating generals, the Turkish Dahlans, will creep back to their barracks. Faith in God unites us, while the nationalists had divided us." The shift in Turkish politics since then only confirms Shamir's words.

Is there is a pax russia unfolding? Ukraine is poised to turn back the anti-Russian policies of the Orange revolutionaries. Both Ukraine and Turkey depend heavily on Russian energy supplies, and their political course is responding to this as well as to an aversion to the aggressive nature of US foreign policy around the world. If Georgia rids itself of its pro-US anti-Russian president, suddenly US hegemony in the region evaporates.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite their bitter standoff now have good relations with both Turkey and Russia and will inevitably have to bury their hatchet as their conflict loses its ability to mobilise support in the interests of power politics. The Iranians sensibly refuse to cave in to Western and Israeli pressures. Their star can only rise as the US and Israel’s sets.

Netanyahu, Hegel and the Jewish Spirit

by Gilad Atzmon

“Spirit does not toss itself about in the external play of chance occurrences; on the contrary, it is that which determines history absolutely, and it stands firm against the chance occurrences which it dominates and exploits for its own purpose”. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831)

PM Netanyahu was quoted by the Israeli Ynet last week saying that the “whole of Israel would be surrounded by a fence eventually”. According to another report he said “there will be no choice but to fence Israel in on all directions”. What Netanyahu means by ‘fence’ and ‘all directions’ may be left open for the time being. However, PM Netanyahu has managed to bring to light an Hegelian interpretation of the notion of ‘Jewish spirit’ as a relentless inclination towards segregation and isolation. It is the tendency to keep oneself apart that determines and shapes Jewish collectivism. Whether it is the Zionists and their walls, the Orthodox and their Kosher universe or even Jewish anti Zionists and their racially segregated miniature activist cells, somehow every form of Jewish political engagement is there to set the Jews apart.

“For Hegel” says Francis Fukuyama, “the contradictions that drive history exist first of all in the realm of human consciousness, i.e. on the level of ideas”. It is reasonable to argue that from an Hegelian perspective, all human behaviour and human history is rooted in a prior state of consciousness. For Hegelian thinkers such as Alexandre Kojève, understanding the underlying processes of history requires understanding the realm of consciousness for it is consciousness that will ultimately remake the material world into a mirror image of its own spirit. In short it is the spirit that would eventually shape the material reality as a mirror of itself. Accordingly, the Jewish state, could be realised as a reflection of the Jewish spirit for it is the Jewish spirit that shapes the reality of the Jewish state.

For Hegel history ended in 1806. For him mankind reached its end with the French and American Revolutions. Whether Hegel was correct or completely deluded in his reading of human history and mankind’s evolution is a matter for an ongoing philosophical debate. The Jewish state, however, can be easily interpreted in Hegelian terms as the ‘end of Jewish history’. Zionism presented a dream, it set itself a serious challenge: it promised to transform the Jew into a ‘civilised and authentic human being’. It vowed to make the Jews people like all other people. Zionism was in fact a call of defiance against the hitherto Jewish spirit. Yet, the current state of Israel proves beyond doubt that the spirit has defeated the Zionist proclaimed fantasy. The will to be ‘fenced from every possible direction’ prevailed. The aspiration to be ‘people amongst people’ is a matter for historical enquiry, it has no support on the ground whatsoever. The spirit won over the rational ideological fantasy.

As tragic as it may sound, it would be almost impossible to reflect on Jewish history without Israel. It would be impossible to understand how one people managed to bring so much hate on themselves. Israel is, no doubt, a unique social experiment in Jewish history. It is in the Jewish State where the people of the book have managed to liberate themselves of any inhibitions. It is in the Jewish state where "kosher" bus lines feature “separate seating for men and women”. It is in Israel where Jews live their spirit to the max. It is where Jews celebrate their cultural, material, spiritual and ideological symptoms. But it is also a place where Jews live happily on stolen land while oppressing and starving the indigenous population. As it happens, in the Jewish state Israelis celebrate their national ‘home coming’, and they do it all behind fences and at the expense of the Palestinians.

In Hegelian terms Israel is a product of Jewish spirit. Yet, Israel is NOT a representation of Judaism as Israel is not a Halachic State*. It is not the state of the Jews as the majority of Jews prefer to live amongst the Goyim. However, Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish state’. It is the place where Jews freely explore the meaning and pride of being Jewish. Hence, the reality of the Israeli state and its categorical ethical failure leads us towards an Hegelian critical confrontation with the notions of Jewish consciousness, ideology (Jewishness) and spirit.

The failure of Zionism to erect a civilised humanist Jew is an accepted fact. It instead managed to raise an extremely brutal version of the ‘Diaspora’ tribal subject it aimed to amend. Needless to say that Israeli war crimes are not an isolated rare event, they are actually institutional and committed by a popular army (IDF) that is following orders given by a democratically elected government. As if this is not enough, the Israeli crimes are supported by the vast majority of the Israelis. The fact that at the time of the Gaza war 94% of the Israeli Jewish population supported the genocidal crime is more than enough to incriminate the entire Israeli society as a collective. But it goes further, the Israeli crime is supported institutionally by world Jewry. It would be intelligible to argue that from an Hegelian perspective Israel is the end of Jewish history as much as the French revolution was the Hegelian end of history of mankind. Israel is the materialisation of the Jewish consciousness.

Netanyahu’s recent admission that Israel will be fenced from every possible direction is far more than mere symbolism. It is there to expose the solid kernel at the heart of the Jewish collective tribal desire. As Hegel suggests, it is “spirit that determines history” or to be precise and concrete, it is the Jewish spirit i.e. the inclination towards isolationism that determines Jewish history and the reality of Israeli barbarism.

Listening to Netanyahu and looking at the reality of Israel makes it obviously clear that rather than the Goyim, it is actually the Jewish spirit that imposed the Ghetto on the Jew. Emancipation of European Jewry provided Jews with an opportunity to leave tribalism behind. Needless to say that many Jews bought into the idea and found their way into the crowd. Many Jews had become voices for humanist causes and thoughts. However, many others decided to maintain a spiritual partition. In order to do so they invented a phantasmic cultural ethos. They may have even invented ‘victimhood’ and ‘anti Semitism’ just to justify their state of self imposed alienation. Observing Israel and any other form of Jewish politics makes it too easy to grasp how and where it all goes wrong.

As things stand there is no easy remedy for the secular Jew for there is no safe haven for Jewish secular collectivism or identity that fits into the notion of humanism or universalism. If Jews insist upon being secular and humanist they may have to drop their ‘J’ prefix and to operate as ordinary people. This is the only alternative to Zionism and it can also be a beginning of a wonderful friendship (with others as well as nature).

* The concept of a Halachic state refers to a theocratic state based upon Jewish Law.