Israel/Palestine

Iran, Israel and the Bomb

Israel/Palestine, War on Iran
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Avedon Carol quotes Israeli historian Martin van Creveld on Iran and nuclear weapons: “Since 1945 hardly one year has gone by in which some voices — mainly American ones concerned about preserving Washington’s monopoly over nuclear weapons to the greatest extent possible — did not decry the terrible consequences that would follow if additional countries went nuclear. So far, not one of those warnings has come true. To the contrary: in every place where nuclear weapons were introduced, large-scale wars between their owners have disappeared.”

Carefully not noted by Martin is a) the lack of evidence about Iran’s alleged attempts to create nuclear weapons and b) the fact that there is one country in the Middle East which unquestionably does have nuclear weapons which it has never admitted to: Israel…

Recognising Israel

Israel lobby, Israel/Palestine, Zionism
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Ellis Sharp explains why recognising Israel’s right to exist is not as simple as all that:

Now of course in one obvious sense Israel exists. But as anti-Zionist bloggers have repeatedly asked: which Israel is to be recognised? The Israel defined by the United Nations in 1948, which handed over land held by a majority Arab population to European Jews? The Israel of 1949, when the first major phase of ethnic cleansing had been completed, and Palestinians had not only been driven out of the U.N.’s defined Jewish state but a huge area of land on top of that? Or should it be Israel in 1967, when within Israel yet more ethnic cleansing had been surreptitiously carried out, and when the rest of historic Palestine was occupied? Or Israel in 2006, which has flouted innumerable UN resolutions and grabbed even more occupied land from the Palestinians? Israel 2006, presumably.

The Israeli writer Yizchak Laor once observed that as an ideology Zionism has always been closer to racism and fascism than to liberalism. But, historically, it has always succeeded in co-opting liberals to its cause, right back to the days of George Eliot and Daniel Deronda. The British Labour movement throughout its history appears (as far as I can tell) to have always been strongly pro-Israel.

To succeed in getting even Harold Pinter to demand “recognition of Israel” and to have the GMB passing blatantly Zionist motions is, to my mind, quite remarkable. Recognition of Israel’s right to exist requires beaten-up victims to recognise that thieves have a right to stolen property. But that’s not what recognition is really about. Recognition is about accepting Israel’s right to exist as a sectarian state which defines citizenship by religion and comprehensively discriminates against citizens who do not belong to the master religion. Israel has no general anti-discrimination legislation and no commitment to equality. Israel accords second-class status to non-Jews.

Decent people cannot recognise Israel as a state with a right to exist until it stops being an Apartheid state, like decent people could not support South Africa’s right to exist as an Apartheid state either. Now it may seem today that this will never happen, but it seemed that way with South Africa in the eighties as well, with its Black population herded into bantustans and only let out to serve as cheap labour, almost slave labour, the South African army rampaging across the Frontline states at will, Mandela and other resistance leaders locked up or killed and no negotiation with the ANC possible. Yet a few years later the system was broken down, South Africa made peace with its neighbours and Mandela became president. Israel could do the same, but will not do it voluntarily. Therefore, we need toboycott Israel like South Africa was boycotted.

War not going well for Israel

War on Lebanon
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The war is not going well for the Israelis is it? One of the Israeli warships blockading Lebalon was hit yesterday, killing four sailors by either an “explosives-laden drone” (the story Friday) or an “Iran-manufactured C-802 missile” (according to the Israeli army today and very convenient it is too in the ongoing quest to subject Iran to regime change). This is not supposed to happen and the instinctive impulse to blame it on Iranese supplied supermissiles is telling: Hezbollah is not supposed to be this smart, so the only way they could’ve damaged a superior Israeli warship must’ve been with a supermissile supplied by somebody else, somebody more respectable. Twenty years ago the USSR would’ve been blamed, today it’s Iran. The ship btw is very likely a Eilat class large missile corvette, the largest ships Israel has in service…

At the same time, the Palestinians showed they were not stupid either, when “Hamas gunmen” blew a hole in the wall separating Gaza from Egypt, allowing around a 1,000 Palestinians caught on the wrong side of the border to finally go home. Again, this is not according to the script. Palestinians are supposed to suffer whatever indignities Israel inflicts on them, not find a way around them!

Meanwhile, the Israeli tactics are the same tactics that failed to work in Lebanon last time and since then similar tactics have spectacularly failed for the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq: aerial and artillery bombardments to destroy infrastructure and supposed enemy strongholds combined with blockading actions and a reluctance to get too deep into enemy territory and suffer casualties. The strategy behind these tactics for the Israelis is to bully the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the Lebanese government respectively into leaning on the militants in their areas: “if we make their life miserable enough, they’re bound to hand back our captured soldiers”. So far that does not seem to work.

There’s no real expectance that it will work. The militants in question are barely touched by the bombing, instead it’s the civilian population that suffers. Worse for Israel, the bombardments have the opposite effect than they’re intended to have: they serve to bind the population of Gaza tighter to Hamas and in Lebanon tighter to Hezbollah. It is not as if this was unexpected, so what were the Israeli commanders thinking? It may just be stupidity born from arrogance, something not new to the Israelis, who after all have had more than half a century of continuing military succes, which leads them to underestimate their enemies. Or it may be something more.

There’s a recurring tendency within Israeli strategic thinking to go for the big, conclusive strike that will destroy once and for all their enemies capabilities to attack Israel. In 1982 this thinking led to the invasion of Lebanon, with the idea being that if only South Lebanon was under Israeli control, attacks on the north of Israel would cease. It would be a quick action, with a friendly puppet regime to rule the region backed up by a small Israeli force afterwards and no more worries. Instead, they got sucked further and further into the country and had to remain in South Lebanon themselves until finally withdrawn in 2000. In the process they helped create Hezbollah, but nevermind.

Whatif this kind of thinking is again in fashion? What if the Israeli army wants to use this crisis to launch a proper war, not just targeting Hamas in the Occuppied Territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also getting rid of her last two state enemies, Syria and Iran, the alleged sponsors of Hezbollah/Hamas? If the Palestinians have no more state sponsors, Palestinian resistance will collapse, Israel will not have to fear anymore suicide bombings and can do what it wants in the Occupied Territories. Yes, not very realistic, but realism is often absent when these decisions are made (viz. Iraq).

In any event, there is little hope this war is going to stop soon. Israel in particular is now in a position in which it either has to scale up its efforts to win it, or withdraw and lose face. In its military history, the moments that it has chosen the second option are rare.

Boycott Israel

Israel/Palestine
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Boycott Israel sticker

Why boycott Israel? Because it’s a racist regime, comparable to Apartheid South Africa at its worst. If any illusions about the Palestinian Territories as a new Bantustan still persist, surely this weeks attack on the Gaza strip should have dispelled them. Israel will not change its ways until it is forced to do so. Hence a boycott.