Global Palestine versus global Israel—II

In the next elections, to defeat Fulbright, the American Zionist Council filled the coffers of his opponent. Soon afterward AIPAC opened its office on Capitol Hill and started to threaten the American Senators for the consequences if they had temerity to oppose the Zionist lobby by opposing the state of Israel.

Since then, the question raised by Berezniki became an existential one haunting all and sundry, was America an Israeli mule and was the dog wagging the tail, or was it otherwise? Recently Jamal Bowman & Corrie Bush, the vocal supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza have lost their elections.

Global Palestine versus global Israel—I

The APIAC has invested more than 9 million $ against them, a fact admitted by A O C (Alexandria Ocasio Cortez).

The recent speech of Netanyahu, in the US Congress, where the Shakespearean devil cited the Scripture to serve his purpose and was applauded by the equally imperious and impious creatures in the Congress, was the consequence of millions of dollars the AIPAC pored and continues to pour in Congressmen’s coffers. They were not applauding to an imperialist agent but to the privileges, pelf, and perks that come with the applause.

The settler-colonial states of the world are fighting to control the resources of the Middle East through war without involving the evil necessity of “the process of production”. Nevertheless, it has cleared all the ambiguities, relating to master-slave relationships, between the US and Israel.

The world’s much-hyped technological power could not sustain itself against guerilla warfare, without the continuous help of the Europeans especially of Germany and the US military-industrial complex. The US is participating in the war directly by shooting down the drones fired by Ansarullah known as the Houthis and by the Iranians.

The US fleet Eisenhower stayed in the Mediterranean Sea for a long but once it was withdrawn Houthis successfully managed to target Jafa now Tel Aviv.

The one-dimensional support of Israel by the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand has made this conflict, a struggle between the global North or global Israel versus the global South or global Palestine.

The latter comprises South Africa, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, Bolivia, and the rest of the oppressed world.

The recent Guardian report reveals that an “estimated 60,000 US citizens live in settlements in the West Bank… An estimated 23,380 US citizens serve in Israel’s armed forces, according to the Washington Post”.

As I have mentioned in my book “God’s Republics” Israel has always taken pride in killing the leaders of its opponents, picking them in isolation, and killing them through terrorist attacks.

Even there is a wide suspicion that the secret hand behind the assassination of President Kennedy was that of the Israeli state.

Kennedy’s assassination mystery aside the Israeli state has killed several Iranian high-profile journalists in the past.

The killing of General Qasim Suleimani did not auger well for the US because it was responded to by the Iranians attacking the US base in Iraq and destroying it.

The recent killing of Ismail Haniyeh the head of Hamas, a moderate who never touched a gun in his life is another example of state terrorism. Israel also assassinated Fuad Shukr, a seasoned Hezbollah leader on the same day. Lest we forget for a brief period Haniyeh opposed the Syrian Assad regime while supporting the US-backed revolt in Syria.

In his “Iron Cage,” Rashid Khalidi states “PLO leaders who were assassinated between 1968 and 1991 included Abu ‘Ali Iyyad, Ghassan Kanafani, Sa’id Hamami, Abu Yusuf al-Najjar, Kamal Nasser, Kamal ‘Adwan, Majid Abu Sharar, Abu Hassan Salameh, Brig. Gen. Sa’d Sayil (Abu al-Walid), ’Isam Sirtawi, Abu Jihad, Abu al-Hol, and Abu Iyyad…..”. According to a documentary released by Aljazeera Yaseer Arafat was also poisoned by the Zionist authorities.

Why support Israel

The most pertinent and existential question worth asking is, that despite the Cold War becoming a history why do the US and Europe continue to support a Zionist entity without borders and constitution especially when the surrounding Arab states have already been aligned with the US?

Why is it impossible to get rid of Zionism and taking control of Palestine by installing a puppet regime akin to Mahmud Abbas from the river to the sea where all three monotheistic religions could exist cordially?

After all the experiment was successfully carried out in South Africa where the white ruling class was replaced with the black one while the entire superstructure and economic base remained untouched, the Central Bank was deregulated, and the economy was dominantly controlled by the white capitalist class even now.

There could be many reasons for denying that option to the Palestinians. According to Noam Chomsky, “The USA supports Israel not out of benevolence, but because it’s useful for US policies. They have cultural relations and have backing from Christian Zionism which is part of the demographic base of the Republican Party—extremely anti-Semitic, but pro-Israel (On Palestine)”.

For Ilan Pappe, it was Christian Zionism that promoted Jewish Zionism. “Zionism has a special affinity with the American settler-colonial project because the settlement of North America was also derived from readings of the Bible and from the idea of pilgrimage to a holy land or to a new Jerusalem. He adds, “Across the United States today you can find towns called ‘Bethlehem’, ‘Canaan’ and even ‘Zion’. There were thus two ‘cities on the hill’—(this is) the expression American settlers had for the new colonies they built on Native American land. One they built with their own hands out of nothing, and the other was in Palestine.”(Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic).

In my view, the following three factors are extremely important.

1- The defeat of Zionism in Palestine is likely to open the revolutionary situation or in imperialist language a Pandora’s box in the entire Arab World. GHASSAN KANAFANI stressed that “the Palestine problem could not be solved in isolation from the Arab world’s whole social and political situation” but the uprising of the freedom fighters has suggested otherwise.

From the US, UK, and Germany—the three ardent supporters of Zionism to every country in the world the Palestinian question has raised a tempestuous response. It looks as if Palestine will solve the Arab question, if not today sometime in the future albeit it must have to go through another revolution under the banner of another Bolshevik party.

2- The other plausible reason, mentioned in my book alludes to a discussion between Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe. They suggest that besides the indigenous resistance in South Africa, Cuban military intervention played an instrumental role in ending apartheid in South Africa.

The Cubans strategically sent mostly black soldiers who drove the South Africans out of Angola and Namibia. It gave a psychological boost to the black African and broke the myth of the invincibility of a white man. When Mandela came out of jail his first comment was to praise Cubans for their help.

Today the freedom movement cannot rely on Cuban support and no Gaddafi is around to extend monetary help to the fighters as he did to South Africa.

Despite this unfortunate international situation, Chomsky is sanguine and reminds us about the Arab Spring which “bewildered the Israelis seeing young secular Egyptians who manifested and believed in everything the Israelis at least allegedly believed in as well—whether it was liberalism, democracy, and so on—and yet they were very clear about Palestine, including in the signs that they were carrying.

This combination of highly committed young Arabs to both the idea of Palestine and democracy frightened the Israelis who would be much more comfortable if the pro-Palestinian sentiment were packaged in an antidemocratic way.

In the early stages of the Arab Spring“, he adds, “A very significant solidarity was developing between American, European, and Egyptian activists. The Arab Spring began around the time of the Wisconsin uprising.

There were messages of support from Egyptian labour leaders to Wisconsin activists, and conversely, Occupy people went to Egypt. Another aspect of the Arab Spring that cannot be discussed in the USA for ideological reasons is the role of labour.

The militant labour movement was very significant (in Egypt and the US). One of the lasting achievements is a substantial boost in the opportunities for labour organizing which had been crushed under the previous regime.“

(To be continued)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024