Jan 28, 2009
The great fear of Israel's Zionist
leaders is that ordinary people in all of historic Palestine, no matter what
their religion, will define the struggle against Zionism not as Jew versus
non-Jew but as a struggle by those who seek equality under the law for all
people, no matter what their religion, versus those who oppose that goal. Thus
Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert, as reported in Ha'aretz November 29,
2007, said:
WASHINGTON - "If the day comes when the two-state
solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting
rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that
happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement
to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.
"The
Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to
come out against us," Olmert said, "because they will say they cannot support a
state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its
residents."
Zionism's Core Strategy
Israeli leaders have a fundamental
strategy for staying in power:
#1. Make
ordinary Jews in Israel and the American public believe that Jews are surrounded
by violent anti-Semitic terrorists. Do this by portraying all resistance to
Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as anti-Semitic terrorism.
#2. Use
Israeli and American military power to ensure that resistance to Zionism never
succeeds in overthrowing Israel's Zionist ruling elite.
The first part of the strategy is
clearly essential for the second part.
The number one requirement for
Palestinian resistance to succeed is to defeat Zionism's core strategy. There is
every reason to believe it is possible to do this.
There are five million Jews in Israel
and three-hundred million Americans in the United States. Most of these people
want to live in a world where people are not
at war with one another, and where the principle
of equality prevails. People support the kind of governmental terrorism that
Israel inflicts upon its enemies only when they are convinced that an enemy with
very different values threatens them and it is kill-or-be-killed.
When the resistance to Zionism
succeeds in persuading most Israelis and Americans that it is Zionism itself
that attacks the positive values shared by most people of all religions, then
and only then will it be possible to overthrow the Israeli ruling class. Israeli
leaders understand this. This is why they act in a manner that is otherwise
paradoxical.
The Role of
Hamas
Israeli leaders have been carrying
out actions, prior to and including the recent slaughter of Palestinians in
Gaza, that strengthen, not weaken, Hamas.
Many articles and reports by
knowledgeable sources across the political spectrum acknowledge and describe
this strange fact, regardless of their differing explanations for it and
attitudes toward it.
In a 2002 UPI
report, Richard Sale wrote:
"...according
to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the
late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a
period of years. Israel 'aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it
as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),' said Tony
Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. Israel's
support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a
strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former
senior CIA official."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward
Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, wrote in the London
Review of Books January 15, 2009:
"Resistance
movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas, by contrast, can
plausibly claim that they forced Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab land
while scoring impressive gains at the ballot box; they have also been reasonably
free of corruption. As
if determined to increase the influence of these radical movements, Israel has
undermined Abbas and the PA at every turn... But Hamas will not be so easily
defeated... it looks likely to emerge politically stronger when the war is
over,..."
John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of
Chicago, wrote January 18, 2009, in
"Gaza: Another War, Another
Defeat, "
"Indeed,
Hamas''
reaction to Israel's brutality seems to lend credence to Nietzsche's remark that what
does not kill you makes you stronger."
Anthony H. Cordesman, a national
security analyst for ABC News, in "The War
in Gaza: Tactical Gains, Strategic Defeat?" written on January 9, 2009, said:
"
At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new
Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for
Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and
the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict... What
is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting?...Will Israel end in
empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? ...To
[be] blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes."
Khalid
Amayreh, a journalist who
lives with his family in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura, in "Hamas
Gaining Sympathy as Onslaught Continues" written January 1,
2009, reported:
" Palestinian
intellectuals as well as ordinary people expect Hamas' popularity to rise
dramatically when the present Israeli campaign is over...' There
are widespread feelings among Palestinians that the PA is quite satisfied
with what is happening in Gaza. And undoubtedly this is going to seriously
undermine the image of Palestinian leadership,' opined Abdul Sattar Qassem,
Professor of political Science at the Najah National University in Nablus.
Qassem predicted that the current Israeli campaign would actually lead to the
boosting of Hamas’s popularity.
"Qassem said he believed that the
PA would be the
biggest loser in the current showdown between Israel and Hamas.
"Another Palestinian intellectual, Abdul Bari Atwan, predicts that public
support for Hamas will increase as a result of the present Israeli campaign in
the Gaza Strip."
Finally, this
video made January 13, 2009, reports:
"Since beginning its offensive in the Gaza
Strip Israel has repeatedly declared it will maintain attacks to smash what it
calls the Hamas terrorist machine. However, as Israel's bombardment continues,
the appeal of Hamas in the Arab world appears to be growing. Al Jazeera's Hashem
Ahelbarra reports on how the war has left Hamas gaining popular support."
Most of these authors explain the fact that Israel strengthens
Hamas while claiming it wants to weaken it in terms of the incompetence of
Israeli leaders. But when somebody keeps doing something that has a consequence
he claims not to want, the most plausible explanation is that he really does
want it.
Standard wisdom may deny it, but the
fact of the matter is that Israeli leaders have good reason for wanting to
strengthen the hand of Hamas. Hamas and the Zionist leaders of Israel both want
the conflict framed the same way--as a religious war between Jews and non-Jews,
rather than as a conflict between those who want equality regardless of one's
religion, in a democratic and secular state, and those who want inequality.
The Zionist version of this shared
Israel/Hamas religious war framework calls for making most or possibly all of
Palestine a Jewish state based on the assertion in the Declaration of the
Establishment of the State of Israel that, "[T]he
right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right
is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like
all other nations, in their own sovereign State." Israeli leaders have
implemented this framework by carrying out violent ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians, oppressing Palestinians both inside and outside of Israel, and
periodically slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese non-combatant civilians.
Hamas's version of this religious war
framework, spelled out in its "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement
(1988)" calls for Palestine to be an Islamic state, in which "It is the duty of the
followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this
region." Hamas leaders have implemented this framework by targeting Jewish
non-combatant civilians with suicide bombers and Qassam rockets.
Israeli leaders need the conflict to
be framed the way that Hamas helps them to frame
it, as Jew versus non-Jew. Only in this framework, which the pro-Israel
mass media spin as "decent freedom-loving people versus violent anti-Semitic
terrorists," can the true rulers of Israel--billionaires,
generals and the politicians who serve them--maintain their grip on the Jewish
population of Israel and maintain the backing of Jews and the general public in
the United States--their indispensable ally.
This is what explains the otherwise
paradoxical fact that Israeli leaders do things that strengthen Hamas and keep
doing these things over and over and over again.
This also explains why Israeli
leaders have done everything possible to undermine the legitimacy of the PLO
(Fatah and Abbas) in the eyes of Palestinians. The PLO's official goal is (or at
least, before Oslo, was) a democratic secular Palestine with equality for all
people under the law. Any Palestinian organization with this objective poses a
strategic threat to Zionism.
Israeli leaders defeated the PLO by
using Oslo to entice the PLO leadership to act in a manner that caused the
Palestinian people--justifiably--to dismiss the PLO as corrupt stooges of the
Israeli government. Israel's then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon, delivered the
final blow to the PLO and delivered a valuable gift to Hamas when, just prior to
the 2006 Palestinian elections, he made a big show of insisting that the Israeli
withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza was a unilateral act and not the
result of any negotiations with the PLO's Abbas. This told Palestinians that the
PLO's strategy of moderate negotiating accomplished nothing, and reinforced
Hamas's claim that their militancy was responsible for Israel's withdrawal,
thereby helping to ensure Hamas's electoral victory.
Zionism's core strategy
requires winning the ideological war in Israel and the United States.
Israeli leaders promote Hamas so that they can frame the conflict as a religious
war. The job of good people everywhere in the world is to prevent Israel's
leaders from winning this ideological war, by explaining to our fellow citizens
that no matter what Hamas leaders may say or do, the conflict in Palestine is
most definitely not a religious war.
The vast majority of Palestinians do
not want to replace the inequality of Jews dominating non-Jews with its
opposite. They want equality. They want equality for all people who live in
historic Palestine no matter what their religion. They want the right of return
for Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed by Zionism. They want the same compensation
from Israel for their property that was stolen by Zionism as Jews
received from Germany for their property stolen by Nazis. The only people
who are truly threatened by these demands are the tiny elites who want to rule
over people in a world based on inequality and pitting people against each
other. They are small in number, and we can defeat them.
************************************
Other
articles about Palestine/Israel by John Spritzler
John Spritzler is the author of The
People As Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda In World War II, and a
Research Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
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