artykul dr Israel Shahak'a

[joanna_xx]

zamieszczam artykul profesora chemii na HEBREW UNIVERSITY I prezydenta
izraelskiej ligii Human and civil rights. mowi on o syjonistycznych
aspiracjach dominacji na Bliskim Wschodzie, itp.

THE CONTINUING AIMS OF ZIONIST POLICIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Israel Shahak
Dr. Shahak is Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University and President of
the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He is a survivor of the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the real aims of Zionist
policies in the Middle East (not only or even chiefly in relation to the
Palestinians) and the inevitable consequences of the support, whether
intentional or not, by the United States of those aims over a long period of
time.
The reason for using the expression "Zionist policies" in the title is to
draw the attention to the remarkable fact that the present Israeli
establishment contin­ues to pursue with remarkable constancy policies which
began around 19 17-22. Also, from that time up to the present, there has
been a remarkable continuity in the actual composition of the ruling
establishment. In spite of the many and frequent changes of the government
and of the ruling par­ties, the new wielders of power have always been people
who spent long years serving the previous regimes in military or politi­cal
capacities, and presumably accepting the majority of their policies. This
includes all of the more important politicians of the Likud. Yitzhak Shamir
was for sixteen years in Mossad (Israel's Secret Service) under Ben Gurion
and Levi Eshkol; Ariel Sharon was a favorite of Ben Gurion. Menachem Begin,
as the head of the major opposition party, for many years was informed of
everything and in return gave his loyal support to most of the foreign
policies of Israel. Shimon Peres and Yit­zhak Rabin played the same game from
1977-84, even during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In fact, with the
exception of small groups on the right and the left mar­gins of the political
spectrum, Israeli for­eign policies, like the Zionist policies before them,
have been governed by a consensus (as it is called in Israel) which has
endured now for more than sixty years, during which time the cohesion of
this basic unity has very rarely been shaken or even threatened. The Zionist
establishment is in fact the oldest in the Middle East, for its continuity
has never been broken, either by a revolution or by a large-scale influx of
persons with a different education or outlook from the founding fathers'.
Dur­ing the same period, all Arab countries experienced one or both of these
disrup­tive phenomena.
This long continuity is one of the most important components of Israeli
strength. But the resulting inertia and reliance on old precedents is also a
source of weak­ness, particularly when new policies or new approaches have to
be devised. In particular, Israeli policymakers will usu­ally view the Arab
world from a static point of view and try to ignore the changes,
particularly the social changes, taking place in it.
As this analysis is concerned with long-term aims, I will ignore the
differences among ‘‘hawks'' and ‘‘doves'' within the Israeli establishment.
These are less sig­nificant than outsiders suppose and are concerned mainly
with means rather than ends. For example, many of the Israeli
establishment "doves" opposed Sharon in 1982 because they were of the
opinion that a much greater military effort should be mounted against the
Syrians, or that the alliance inside Lebanon should not have been made with
Phalangists, or not exclu­sively with them. They were especially divided over
how to represent the war to the Israeli public or to world opinion. War
itself was very little opposed from inside the Israeli military
establishment, although everybody knew that it was coming. In a similar way
in 1956, the leftist opposition within the establishment opposed the Israeli
alliance with Britain and France but was of the opinion that Israel should
have attacked Egypt without them and changed the regime there. In the same
way, the Israeli attacks on Jordan in 1966-67 and the attacks on the Syrian
airforce over Damascus airspace ("in order to change the Syrian regime" as
Yitzhak Rabin, then the Chief of Staff, proudly declared) which led to the
six day war were supported by the whole Israeli establishment. Of course,
within this concensus there are numerous pragmatic disagreements, but for
the pur­pose of discovering real long-term aims they can be ignored. Those
aims can be discovered first, from activities of the Israeli government;
second, from decla­rations obviously intended for the internal consumption of
the Israeli establishment itself; and third, from the rich historical
literature in Hebrew dealing with the his­tory of the last sixty to eighty
years, some of which is on a very high level of veracity and scholarship.
DOMINATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST
It is quite clear that the domination of the whole Middle East by Israel is
the constant aim of Israeli (and before this of Zionist) policies and that
this aim is shared (within the establishment) by both ‘‘doves and "hawks."
The disagreement is about the means: whether by war

[joanna_xx]

The Zionist, and later the Israeli, poli­cies of opposition to every step on
the road to Egyptian independence, backed at least in private by arguments of
a similar type, continued to the point of formal demands made by the newly
created State of Israel to Britain not to remove its troops in the early
fifties from the canal zone. The notorious "Lavon affair," in which an Israeli
spy ring based on members of the Jewish Egyptian community tried to put bombs
in Egyptian cinemas or in the American Library there, was similarly intended
to prevent the evacuation of the British troops from Egyptian territory and to
create the impression that the Egyp­tians are terrorists, a theme which is
still used about the whole Arab world. Simi­larly, the aim of the 1956 Suez war
from the Israeli point of view was not only the destruction of the Egyptian
army or the annexation of Sinai, but the change of the Egyptian regime of that
time. In fact, Lova Eliav, then and now one of the leaders of the Israeli
doves, headed, by his own sub­sequent admission in 1972, a special task group
which was intended, in cooperation with the French government and support from
within the then-existing Jewish com­munity of Cairo, to carry out a coup d'etat
and put into power politicians whom Israel thought reliable. The plan was only
pre­vented, to the great regret of Israeli "doves," because it was made behind
the back of the British government of that time, which discovered it at the
last moment and vetoed it.
Through this whole long period from the twenties, the Zionist movement and
Israel were indeed in contact

[joanna_xx]

Many similar discussions about proposals from the same period made both
by "doves" and "hawks" could be quoted to illustrate the thesis that the
domination of the whole Middle East, either by a warlike conquest of parts of
it or by alliances with regimes which necessarily become alienated because of
such alli­ances, or by making those regimes depen­dent on an internal power
structure over which Israel (or the Zionist movement) has a great influence,
has been and remains the real Israeli aim. In pursuing this aim the Israeli
establishment has shown both flexibility and tenacity in the methods employed,
and also in being ready to make significant retreats when under compul­sion.
There are two principal examples of such retreats: the retreat from Sinai from
1956-57, made because of the insistence of the two superpowers, and the
retreat from most of the area of South Lebanon, made under the pressure of
popular resistance. The lesson of 1956-57 has been absorbed by the Israeli
establishment. All possible efforts have been made (and will be made) to
prevent any cooperation between the United States and the USSR on Middle
Eastern affairs, with great prospect of suc­cess in that direction. The lesson
of guer­rilla warfare based on popular support in Lebanon in 1983-85 has not
been absorbed in Israel. In fact, the profound social change which has
occurred in most Arab countries since the fifties is not understood. The
inertia resulting from long continuity pro­duces the effect that the
only "model" of an Arab regime (or movement) which the Israeli establishment --
the "doves" par­ticularly

[joanna_xx]

The introduction of advanced fighter planes and of mobile land-air missile
batteries into Hussein's army might force Israel to react in advance with a
preventive blow against this army, in every case of war breaking out in the
region.
After giving in great detail the military equipment which Jordan has, or is
going to purchase mainly from the United States but also from the USSR, and
after high­lighting the great danger to Israel from the "joint maneuvers by the
Jordanian and American forces," since those exercises are an important
contribution to the improvement of the offensive capacity of the Jordanian
army, the author concludes:
Israel's security policy must have an answer also for the worst scenario. One
of these scenar­ios, taking into account a situation when Israel has to face
the outbreak of war on the eastern front, including the armies of Syria,
Jordan, as well as Iraqi expeditionary contingents, forces the Israeli Defense
Army to take immediate steps in order to neutralize the threat to sensitive
tar­gets inside Israel. For this purpose it seems that there will be no choice
but to inflict a precon­ceived preventive blow on Jordan.
Thus, paradoxically, the supply of modern sophisticated weapons to the
Jordanian army not only does not enhance the security of the King­dom of
Jordan, but even involves a great danger to its army (my emphasis).
The same theme was taken (among many others) by the famous Zeev Schiff, also
in Haaretz (August 16, 1985) in an article entitled "Who Wants to Finish Off
Hus­sein?" After pointing out that the old, well-known plan of Sharon for what
he calls "a Palestinization of Jordan," (which means an Israeli conquest of
Jordan and an estab­lishment of a "Palestinian" regime there of the "Village
League" variety) has also been supported for many years by some Israeli
leaders of the Labor Party, he describes the ways in which a "case" for such a
step will be built in Israeli public opinion (and a part of American opinion
as well, one may add):
One does not begin with sudden (airforce) bom­bardments in the center of Amman.
Also in Leba­non it did not begin with the invasion itself and the military
advance on Beirut. Before this, "the case" should be built, the threat should
be cul­tivated, until it becomes something insupportable as a threat to
existence, in the eyes of (Israeli) public opinion (my emphasis).
He even hints at further very interesting possibilities: After pointing out
that "the modern history of the Middle East is full of examples of removing a
ruler by means of murder" and that King Hussein was a target for such attempts
in the past, he sagely observes that in the past, "those who indulged in such
machinations were always Arabs, but it should not be so in the future.
Different scenarios are possible in such a situation. If someday the
responsibility for the Israeli Intelligence and Security Services falls into
the hands of a person without restraint, everything is possible" (my
emphasis). As we say in Hebrew, a hint to the wise is enough, and here we have
much more than a hint; we have a full scenario which is not depen­dent, except
in timing and outward pre­sentation, on Sharon becoming once more the power
inside the Israeli government, but on the same basic reasons which have ruled
Israeli (and before this the Zionist) policies for a long time. Incidentally,
Schiff quickly adduces as the "reason" which worries Sharon and pushes him to
advo­cate an Israeli "preventive" attack on Jor­dan, "that a part of the PLO is
becoming more moderate." In this there is also noth­ing new; the careful
observation of the cease-fire by the PLO between August 1981 and June 1982 was
one of the reasons, freely admitted inside Israel, why Israel invaded Lebanon.
This is part of a familiar pattern.
I will only briefly mention the "rea­sons" which are being given to the more
gullible parts of public opinion, especially in the United States, for such
scenarios: "The fight against terror," particularly world terror, is one of
the most important of them, and of course protecting "West­ern civilization,"
as has been said count­less times in the past. Here, too, nothing changes.
Indeed the main point of this arti­cle is that the policies of the Zionist and
Israeli establishment are, so far, constant, and therefore an unprejudiced
analysis of the past can be a guide to the contingen­cies of the future.
This analysis can be confirmed by an examination of the official "reasons" put
forth inside Israel for the present "missile conflict" with Syria. Briefly,
Israel claims for itself the right to dictate where, on its own territory,
Syria will or will not station weapons (even such defensive weapons as anti-
aircraft missiles). It is important to perceive that all public opinion in
Israel, except the opposition from the left to the present National Unity
government (about 13 percent of the political strength as expressed by Knesset
seats), is united on this point. The whole debate, as freely expressed in the
Hebrew press (not in the Jerusalem Post, of course), is whether Israel should
first take the diplomatic road and only afterward attack Syria, or attack
without diplomacy at a time of its own convenience. The principle of domina­
tion

[joanna_xx]

It employs to a great extent the strength of others, rely­ing on internal
manipulation of the public opinion of the really strong powers. This fact,
however obscured in the Western media and unclear (I think) to a great part of
the pro-Western Arab establishments, is quite clear to the Arab peoples. The
diplomats can be, perforce, satisfied with humiliating arrangements which
achieve some small measure of practical success, i.e. the Israeli flights over
Saudi territory cease after a time, or after a great dispute some old Hercules
planes are delivered by the United States to Egypt. But the peo­ple,
particularly the educated people, who are interested in politics and determine
it in the long run, feel the humiliating prin­ciple involved and become