Deception and Politics from Washington to Tel Aviv
by M.
Reza Behnam
Posted on January 13, 2025
https://original.antiwar.com/Reza_Behnam/2025/01/12/deception-and-politics-from-washington-to-tel-aviv/
In these difficult times, the voice of the late
Palestinian-American scholar, Edward Said is ever present, “Writing is the
final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that
disfigure human history.”
For more than fourteen painful months Israel has
passed off its inhuman actions against the people of Gaza as “defensive.”
We are to believe that the massacre of tens of
thousands of civilians and attacks on its Arab neighbors are somehow Israel’s
“right.” Championed by the Biden administration, Tel Aviv has grown ever
more bolder and barbaric in its efforts to crush the resistance and expand its
“undeclared” borders; simply, because it can.
Since it proclaimed itself a state on Palestinian land
in 1948, Israel has been and continues to be engaged in the largest dispossession of an ethnic group in modern history. And
following its victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel has emerged an
expansionist, occupying and annexationist power, ruling over vast Arab lands
and people.
The United States has, particularly since 1967, been
the bulwark for Israel’s expansionist dreams. U.S.-Israeli supremacist
intentions, papered over and buried for decades, are now clear for all to see.
Out of the ashes of World War II, the newly created
United Nations, with U.S. pressure, helped legalize land theft. In 1948,
the General Assembly (made up of 58 nations) said “yes” to the creation of a
Jewish state on 62 percent of historic Palestine. At the time of the
unequal division, 68 percent of the population were Arab Palestinian
Muslims and Christians, while only 30 percent were Jewish.
Zionist plans to seize all of Palestine, from the
Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, have never ceased, and are clearly
stated in the Likud Party platform of 1977: “The right of the Jewish people
to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… therefore, Judea and Samaria
will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the
Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
The inhumanity, injustices and militarism that we see
today in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen have deep
roots in the founding of the Jewish state and its ongoing desire to create a
hegemonic Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) throughout the Middle East.
The expansionist policies of the current Israeli
regime are not an aberration. They are rather a continuation and the
inevitable outcome of Zionist political ideology espoused by Israel’s founding
fathers, advanced by the Labour and Likud parties, and currently being
prosecuted by the fanatics in the far-right Religious Zionism party.
Like the early Zionists, every Israeli leader
has believed in the Jewish right to all of Palestine and the right to expel the
indigenous population to achieve an exclusive Jewish state. Their plans,
goals and strategies have been blatantly stated and well documented over many
years.
European founders, men like the father of modern
political Zionism, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904); Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940),
founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of today’s Likud Party); Chaim
Weizmann (1874-1952), the first president of Israel; and David Ben-Gurion
(1886-1973), Israel’s first prime minister, agreed that increased Jewish
immigration and removal of Palestinians were required to secure control over
Palestine and to create a Greater Israel.
Following are a handful of the many citations that
should be weighed to understand European Zionism and its ethnic cleansing
schemes for Palestine and its people:
- “When
we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that
receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the
estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless
population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit
countries, while denying it employment in our own country… Both the
process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out
discreetly and circumspectly.” (Herzl, 1895) [to
Herzl, Palestinians were “it”]
- “There
is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it
was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move
the Palestinian Arabs… We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the
East… The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz Israel… [Muslims are]
yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags.” (Jabotinsky,
1939)
- “By
a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the
country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants,
and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be
as Jewish as England is English or America American.” (Weizmann,
1919)
- “With
compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]… I
support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.” (Ben-Gurion, 1937) and “My assumption… is that a Jewish state on
only a part [referring to partition plan] of the land is not the end but
the beginning… every increase in strength helps in the possession of the
land as a whole.” (Ben-Gurion,
1938)
From Israel’s founder, Herzl, to its first prime
minister, Ben-Gurion, its goal has been “a land for Israelis, without
Palestinians.”
Furthermore, by looking back on Israel’s expansionist
strategies, we can better comprehend what Tel Aviv and Washington are currently
plotting for Palestine and the larger region. Their schemes for becoming
the hegemons of the Levant are revealed in the: 1948 Plan Dalet (Plan D); Oded
Yinon Plan, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s;” and 1996 “A Clean Break: A
New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”
The Dalet Plan – Blueprint for the Ethnic Cleansing of
Palestine
Long before the British terminated their mandate and
pulled their army out of Palestine, a cabal of Zionist political and military
leaders, led by Ben-Gurion, had been preparing militarily plans for the
dispossession of the Palestinians once the British left.
Plan Dalet (Plan D) was officially put into effect on 10 March
1948. Military orders were given to the new Israeli army and Haganah
militia to systematically and forcibly remove Palestinians from vast areas of
the country. The operational orders specified which population centers
should be targeted and laid out in detail how to drive out the inhabitants and
destroy their communities, using methods including intimidation, setting fires
to homes, properties and goods, demolishing homes and planting mines to prevent
inhabitants from returning. On 9 April 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, over 150 Palestinian men, women
and children were massacred by Zionist terrorist militias (members of Irgun and
Stern Gang).
After six months, when the Nakba (the catastrophe) ended, over 750,000
Palestinians had been uprooted, 531 villages destroyed and eleven urban
neighborhoods had been depopulated, soon repopulated with Jewish Israelis.
The destruction of Palestinian communities begun
during and after the 1948 Arab- Israeli War marked the beginning of Israel’s
apartheid system on 78 percent of historic Palestine.
The Yinon Plan “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”
In February 1982, an essay appeared in Kivinum
(Directions), a journal of the World Zionist Organization. It was written
by Oded Yinon, a journalist for the Jerusalem Post with close ties to Israel’s
foreign ministry.
The Yinon Plan for the Middle East contained the key
elements of the “Greater Israel” scheme reflected in the expansionist policies
– underwritten by the United States – that Tel Aviv has implemented over more
than eight decades.
Although the “de-Palestinezation of Palestine” has
been a priority, every Arab state has been a target of Zionist expansionism. The Yinon Plan
emphasizes two key elements: To survive, Israel must become an imperial
regional power; and to achieve that hegemony, it must weaken and divide
neighboring Arab states. Israel’s aim has been to create small,
sectarian-based Arab states with little choice but to yield to Israeli
domination.
The Yinon Plan has been taking shape since the
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Israel’s
interest in weak states in the Middle East has been borne out in its air and
cyber-wars and numerous assassinations of prominent opposition figures.
Since 1967, Israel has swallowed up more Arab
land. It has illegally annexed Arab lands in Palestine and the Syrian
Golan Heights; with plans, as recently announced, to colonize the devastated
Gaza Strip and to annex the West Bank.
“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”
A U.S.-Israeli neoconservative research group at the
Institute for Advanced Strategies and Palestine Studies in Washington, D.C.
prepared a policy document in 1996 for newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.
The report titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for
Securing the Realm,” laid out a plan of action on how Washington and Tel Aviv
could integrate their policies to defeat Israel’s “foes” by reshaping the
Middle East.
Notably, the authors of the manifesto worked in the
George W. Bush White House, inside the Pentagon and Defense Department.
Its lead author, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global
Strategic Affairs (1981-87), Richard Perle, was one of the key figures in the
formulation of the disastrous 2003 Iraq war strategy adopted by the Bush
administration.
To win American support, Netanyahu was advised to
package the proposed policies in a language familiar to Americans; hence,
standard-issue canards such as “Israel has the right to defend itself” and
branding supporters of Palestinian rights as “terrorists.”
The strategies described in the “Yinon” and “Clean
Break” plans were constructs for endless U.S.-Israeli wars and chaos in the
region. It should be noted, that the United States has engaged in or sponsored
wars or conflicts – beneficial to Israeli strategy – in Iraq (2003), Libya
(2011), Syria (from 2011 to the present), in Lebanon, Yemen, occupied West Bank
and Gaza; and with Iran if Israel continues to have its way.
To “secure the realm,” Israel was urged to pursue
aggressive policies of preemption and regime change against governments in the
region that resisted Israel’s expansionist aims. Netanyahu was advised to
collaborate with Jordan and Türkiye to destabilize Iraq and to contain Syria
through proxy warfare.
Consistent with “clean break logic,” the Bush
administration, under the pretext that Iraq harbored weapons of mass
destruction, invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled Saddam and dismantled the ruling
Ba’ath Party.
Iraq has yet to recover from America’s eight-year-long
occupation and war.
Despite the Iraqi government’s request that the U.S.
leave, Washington has refused to withdraw its remaining 2,500 troops.
The U.S.-Israel war on Syria, which led to the fall of
President Assad in December 2024 began with the 1996 “Clean Break” strategy for
the region. It escalated in 2011 when President Barack Obama covertly
instructed the CIA to overthrow President Assad in Operation Timber Sycamore. Thirteen years of deadly war, frequent Israeli
air strikes, and crippling U.S.-led economic sanctions, left Syria
impoverished, fragmented and unable to resist foreign invasion.
Israel got what it wanted in Syria, a Balkanized and
weakened country. The United States, Türkiye and their forces dominate in
the North, while Israel controls areas in the South. Tel Aviv now claims
control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and has
declared its intent to expand its illegal colonies in the Golan Heights,
declaring them part of the Israeli state “for eternity.”
Netanyahu has eagerly embraced “Clean Break” proposals
on ways to “secure the realm” in Palestine. He has perversely sabotaged
the Oslo Accords (1993/1995), completely written-off the so-called two-state
solution (land for peace) and sown division within the Palestinian national
movement.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) tasked with limited
government over parts of the occupied Palestinian territories by the now
extinct Oslo Accords, has been reduced to an enforcement arm of the Israeli
security state.
The recent (21 December) large-scale armed crackdown against Palestinian resistance groups in the Jenin
refugee camp carried out by PA Security Forces exemplifies the extent of the
collaboration.
It should be noted, that the assault was coordinated with Washington and Tel Aviv, and put under the
direction of U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, who has served as
U.S. Security Coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority since November
2021.
Clean Break strategists callously advised Israel, “to
pursue Palestinians into all areas.” In its sinister belief that it can
physically destroy the Palestinian national desire to return home to a free
Palestine, Israel has ravaged and pulverized the defenseless Gaza Strip.
And for more than 17 years, Netanyahu has made it his mission to kill as many
Palestinians as the United States and its Western allies will tolerate.
Conclusion
From Herzl’s “spirit them out” to Netanyahu’s campaign
of genocide, the message and actions have been the same – remove all trace of
Palestinians. And from President Harry S. Truman to President Joe Biden,
the message has been: the United States will prevent Israel from failing,
whatever the political or economic cost.
When President Biden asserts that he is a “committed
Zionist,” he emphatically says to Israelis and Americans that the United States
is in lockstep with Israel’s plans to erase Palestinians and their hopes for a
sovereign Palestinian nation. Americans, too, many unwittingly, have
become committed Zionists by financing Israeli supremacy and regional
militarism.
In addition, by suppressing the truth about Israel’s
expansionist plans, American politicians and the corporate media have fed the
country’s addiction to regional supremacy and its dreams of a Greater Israel,
without Palestinians.
Ben-Gurion’s words in a letter to his son in 1937 were menacing and foreboding:
“The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune
moment for making it happen, such as a war.”
Israel’s current Zionist extremists have seized upon
the Palestinian act of resistance on 7 October 2023 to make Ben-Gurion’s hoped
for “opportune moment” a reality, believing that they, like their predecessors,
can continue to disfigure history.
Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in
comparative politics, with a focus on West Asia.
