Perhaps as a result of the deterioration of Iraq, the threat of civil war in Palestine and Lebanon, more international leaders, including the prime minister of Turkey, have called Israel a state terrorist regime. Although such declarations do little more than describe the obvious, they are as important as they are courageous, because they dare to confront an American administration that pursues dangerous and aggressive neocon policies.
Definitions of terrorism vary; all, however, include violence directed against soft targets, that is, civilians and their property to advance a political agenda. With blatant and frequent viciousness, the Israeli government and its agents have killed civilians in the thousands and destroyed their property in the billions of dollars, just counting their actions of the last six months in Lebanon and Palestine. Seldom does a day pass without news of the deaths or the maiming of very young or very old Palestinians, caught up in the pursuit of “terrorists.”
Last summer saw the killing of tens of thousands of Lebanese, the wounding of many more thousands, the displacing of over twenty percent of the population and the destruction of nearly the entire infrastructure of Lebanon, all in the ostensible pursuit of “terrorists.” The Israeli definition of terrorism is more generous than others; it includes all those who do not comply with Israeli orders or who find themselves in the company of such people.
My purpose is not to document Israeli terrorism yet again. I would rather try to explore the purposes of Israeli state terrorism. My assumption is that there is a rational, realistic, if horrific, policy underlying Zionist terrorism. Israeli state terrorism is neither an accident nor a mistake. Israel and its American allies often say that Israel’s activities, including terrorism, torture and other violations of human rights, are unfortunate byproducts of Israel’s efforts to survive in a hostile Arab sea. They claim that these regrettable activities are necessary in the pursuit of laudable goals, a peaceful Israel in a stable, democratic Middle East. When Arab terrorism stops, Israel will behave like any other Western democracy, the way it has always wanted to behave. From this perspective, when a particularly outrageous attack occurs, one which even the Americans notice, when death and destruction cannot be attached to any “terrorist” activity, Israel issues an apology, regretting that a “mistake” was made. Any effort to chastise Israel in the UN is predictably vetoed by the US, and the world waits for the next “mistake” to occur.
I, no more than Kofi Annan, believe in such “mistakes,” such as the killing of UN observers in Lebanon. The Israeli Army cannot at once be the most well-trained, most disciplined, most technologically advanced military force in the region and the most prone to “mistakes.” I believe the Israeli Army is too competent to make “mistakes” so often that they constitute a pattern. I believe “mistakes” cannot make a pattern, which so closely comports with Israel’s objectives in the Middle East. These “mistakes,” to the contrary, illuminate the real policy of Israel.
Zionist policy in the Middle East has three main objectives: The first is the elimination of the possibility of Palestine as a viable political entity. No objective observer believes that a viable Palestinian state can exist without a reversion to 1967 borders, the removal of Israeli settlements from Palestinian land, the dismantling of the matrix of Israeli military roads and other security procedures which make a joke of Palestinian sovereignty, and finally a sovereign right of way between the West Bank and Gaza. These are minimal requirements and they leave a multitude of other serious issues aside, like the right of return of Palestinian exiles.
No Israeli proposal accepts, or ever deals with, any of these issues. Instead, illegal settlements expand and new settlements are proposed, all in violation of UN resolutions and US stated policies. Instead, raids on the West Bank and Gaza are nearly daily occurrences, making a mockery of Palestinian authority. Instead, millions of Palestinians live at the sufferance of Israel for basic necessities, like water and electricity, to say nothing of jobs. All of these policies aim at driving Palestinians from their land, leaving a demoralized, defeated, subservient remnant that Israel will call citizens of the Palestinian state.
The second Israel objective is to sustain instability in the Middle East. From its inception Israeli policy has been to keep the Arab world disunited. It has exploited traditional Arab enmities and fomented others. Israel has subverted Arab governments, instigated civil wars, armed insurgents and generally fomented discontent. Its efforts to arm and train an Iranian Kurdish armed organization associated with the PKK, as recently reported by Seymour Hersh, is but the latest in a long list of activities designed to keep Middle Eastern states in turmoil.
Why would Israel want instability in its region? There are many reasons. The first is that Israel fears Arab solidarity would lead to systematic support on behalf of Palestinians, including pressuring Americans, whose interests in oil trump their domestic political attachments to Israel and their racist antipathy to Arabs. The second reason is that Israel requires America to be a hostage in the Middle East. Every American casualty, in their view, ties America to Israel in an anti-Arab crusade. The so-called war on terrorism is but political cover for Israel’s need for American body bags. A stable Middle East would enable the US to resume the pursuit of its long-term interest in the region, which center on the free flow of oil at market prices. A stable Middle East would enable Americans to have a meaningful debate on what America’s interests in Israel really are.
The third reason for Israel’s preference for instability concerns terrorism. Israel benefits from terrorism, despite the fact that Israelis often suffer from terrorist attacks. Since 9/11, terrorism has tied the US to Israel so tightly that it is virtually impossible to separate an Israeli official pronouncement from a White House declaration. Since 9/11, Israelis and their counterparts, the neocons (disproportionately Jewish) have had a virtual media monopoly on all issues dealing with terrorism and the Middle East.
A typical broadcast is hosted by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewing a neocon, who wants to destroy all Iraqis on the way to Iran and a “moderate,” who thinks we only have to kill enough Iraqis or other Arabs to secure the peace and security of Israel, with Israel defining what that means. Fox TV is worse. (Even when the war in Iraq is criticized, Israel is carefully not mentioned, on the absurd unstated premise that there is no relationship between neocons and Israelis.) The unrelenting argument of all these “debaters” is that Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. Therefore an attack on Israel’s enemies is an attack on America’s enemies.
The fallacy of this position is obvious: America has Arab enemies, because it has uncritically and one-sidedly embraced Israel to the detriment of millions of Palestinians, more than 200 million Arabs and 1.3 billion Muslims. America has Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern antagonists, because it closes its eyes to Israeli nuclear weapons, and the dangers these weapons imply for the region, while making Iranian nuclear energy a virtual cause of war.
America has enemies, because when it comes to Israel, it unashamedly applies a double standard, forgiving Israel war crimes, while criticizing legitimate political aims of Arab and other Middle Eastern peoples.
Perhaps the only benefit of America’s catastrophic war against the Iraqi people is that the veil of Israeli policy, including its neocon versions in the US, has been ripped off. If so, it is possible that a half a million Iraqis, to say nothing of thousands of Americans, will not have died in vain.
— The author is a professor of International Relations at Eastern Connecticut State University.
