On May 14, 1948, Israel was forcefully created in Palestine over vehement opposition from Palestinian Arabs. May 15 symbolizes that horrible period, termed ‘al-Nakba’ or the ‘Day of Catastrophe.’ This day will live in infamy in the hearts and minds of Arabs for centuries to come.
This term is often wrongfully attributed to an Arab ‘exodus’ from Palestine. This was not a voluntary exodus. It was one of the largest expulsion drives in history, in which a largely immigrant minority group drove over 700,000 indigenous people at gunpoint out of their multigenerational homes.
UN Resolution 181 permitted the partition of Palestine in 1947, a precondition for establishing the state of Israel. This ignited an already volatile Palestine. Zionist militia groups like the Hagenah, Irgun, Lehi, and others perpetrated 31 massacres against unarmed Palestinian people. Approximately half of Palestinian villages were demolished, with 11 out of 12 urban areas emptied.
According to historians, this ‘ethnic cleansing’ event was a pivotal moment in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine – a land considered sacred by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who had previously lived side-by-side in the Holy Land for centuries.
Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French and it is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs.” Nelson Mandela also took a stand against the state of Israel, and Jimmy Carter proclaimed “a “horrendous violation of human rights” against Palestinians.
The Historical Precedent for Capitulation to Israel
Modern Israel relies on political backing from Western countries to justify its existence. The 33 members who voted for the aforementioned UN Resolution 181 in 1947 were mostly Western countries, as well as Latin American countries under their influence. Many of these countries secretly wished to dump their Jewish minorities and send them to Israel. The creation of the Jewish state served their own internal prejudices, including their latent antisemitism. They didn’t hesitate to vote for the resolution, despite knowing the epic injustice that would be done to Palestinians.
Surprisingly, the Truman administration as well as almost all his cabinet members were initially against the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Truman’s secretary of state, General Marshall, was vehemently opposed to the creation of Israel. However, President Truman changed his mind after facing electoral threats from influential American Zionist groups. Truman was a weak man, unlike his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt who would not have made such a historic blunder for political gain.
UN members who voted for the resolution knew about atrocities committed by belligerent Zionist militia groups like the Hagenah, Irgun, and Stern Gang. The British Authority had previously been supportive of Jewish immigration to Palestine, but when they began to show sympathy towards Palestinians, they fell victim themselves to Zionist terrorism themselves. Military servicemen and the British ambassador to the Middle East were killed, and the King David Hotel – the British headquarters in Jerusalem – was bombed.
So why did the UN secede their power to Israel, accepting their crimes? We must remember the historical context. Most post-World War II countries were guilty of not doing enough during the Holocaust, in which Jews were tortured and gassed in Nazi camps. An outpouring of global sympathy demanded redemption for the Jewish people. Additionally, underlying political self-interest contributed to support for Israel. Many nations still secretly harbored imperial interests, and all were fearful about the rising political influence of Zionist lobbying groups in their respective countries.
As early as 1919, the King Crane Commission surveyed the region, warning the world about the terrible consequences of forcing a Jewish state upon Palestine. But ignoring all these guidelines, the UN still appeased Zionist forces and gave 56% of land to Jews, who were mostly immigrants from Europe. Since the actual 65% majority of the native population were Palestinian Arabs, this land grab was a flagrant violation of human rights. But geopolitical and electoral self-interests prevailed over the rule of law.
If the UN and the US were committed to establishment of a one-state solution via power-sharing arrangements, sustainable peace could be achieved. Today, we would find an infinitely better Middle East in which Jews and Muslims would find common cause.
The Corrosive Effects of the Israel Lobby
Judging by the volume of death and destruction, other conflicts may appear more damaging than the effects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But appearances are deceiving. The Israel-Palestine conflict will hold the key to many other clashes and conflicts for decades into the future. This conflict has polarized much of humanity along ethno-religious fault lines. Zionist lobbying groups have taken advantage of post-Holocaust sympathies, supporting and sustaining authoritarian governments and sabotaging democratic governments – including the United States – whenever unconditional support for their actions is required.
In order to give pretext to ethnic cleansing in the modern era – in which there is ever-greater awareness of democracy and human rights – Zionist lobby groups must engage in an uphill battle with global society. Since they have failed to delude many non-Western countries – who are well aware of injustice against Palestinians – Zionist lobbying groups have taken the route of disinformation and subterfuge.
These lobbying groups have invested enormous amounts of wealth in the American electoral process. Any candidate who criticizes Israel’s atrocities will find themselves in an all-out electoral battle. Zionist constituencies will pull support from all over the country when candidates dare to speak out against Israel. After phenomenal success through the decades, this precedent is well established in the hearts and minds of representatives in Washington.
One only needs to witness Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent speech at Congress in order to see this influence in action. Netanyahu spoke against the wishes of President Obama, receiving 26 standing ovations despite blatantly criticizing Obama throughout his speech.
The Israel lobby has now found itself within a club of Western elites. Other lobbyists regularly collude with them for mutual benefit. Sociologist C. Wright Mills warned in his famous book, ‘The Power Elite’ that top individuals from the military-industrial complex and corporate America collaborate with corrupt politicians in order to exert a near-oligarchic grip on government.
In order to hijack American democracy in support of their interests, Zionist lobbying groups vilify Muslims in general and Arabs in particular. Massive academic and media campaigns are funded in order to systematically foster Islamophobia in the West, thus creating a wall between Western countries and Muslim-majority countries.
How can one derail a system like the United States, a two-hundred-year-old time-tested democracy? One can hijack the truth via the media, a platform previously known as the ‘blueprint of democracy.’ In 1996, the Israel lobby contributed to the passing of the Telecommunications Act under President Clinton, which allowed a gold-rush of mergers and buyouts of media outlets. Within a few years, the American media found itself in the hands of a startingly few number of outlets. Once it was the global voice of freedom, but currently the public is repeatedly misinformed and misled, as described in the highly acclaimed documentary The Occupation of the American Mind.
Israeli exceptionalism has had pervasive and corrosive effects on cultural dialogue in America. ‘The Holocaust Industry’ by Norman Finkelstein exposes themes constantly reinforced by the media and film industry that create an atmosphere of ‘exceptionalism’ for Israel. As a result, media pundits describe the Middle East peace process in a manner rife with prejudice and chauvinism. Resentment against Israel has contributed to the growth of white supremacist movements and Christian Right movements. Any disinformation campaign that favors one minority group over another minority group ultimately leads to blowback.
Moving From the ‘Optics of Peace’ Towards Real Peace
Many Americans incorrectly believe that nineteenth-century Zionism is in fact Judaism, a four-thousand-year-old religion. But Zionism is not Judaism. In fact, most Jews reject Zionism as declared by the American Council of Jews in 1993. Many Western Jews, especially American Jews, are distancing themselves from Israel. Movements such as Jewish Voice for Peace continue to grow. Individual Jewish voices against Israel’s oppression are widely recognized as authorities on the conflict.
According to Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, Arabs previously had no issue with coexistence with Jews. Arabs were initially sympathetic to settler European Jews escaping persecution during the late nineteenth century. Arabs shared their farmland, businesses, and even shared political space with them in order to create an integrated community. Particularly in urban areas, Jewish settlers could not survive without engaging economically with Palestinians. Despite attempts by Zionist forces to disrupt this coexistence, hundreds of joint businesses still formed throughout early periods of Jewish immigration.
However, Zionist leaders ultimately succeeded in pressuring Jews to boycott Palestinians. This drove the latter out of the job market, and conflicts began to fester. Previously in 1928, the 80% majority Palestinians were willing to share governance with the 17% minority Jewish population. But Zionist leaders rejected this offer. After Zionist militia groups began to spread, Palestinians began to recognize that their ultimate goal was an expulsion project. Riots and resistance ensued.
Gideon Levy states that if Israel was interested in peace, it would not have built occupation settlements for decades. But their peace process was instead a ploy to buy time. Zionist lobbying groups have convinced US congressional leadership that Israel needs to be strong and secure in order to move towards conflict resolution with Palestine. But this trope is a mega-bluff. The more powerful Israel has become, the more intransigent and arrogant it has actually become. Israel’s empowerment process is a hallucination initiated by Western elites.
One can see their cruel agenda in Gaza, an open-air ‘largest prison in the world.’. Emergency room patients are deliberately and unnecessarily kept waiting for hours. Palestinian water is 97% contaminated, as Israel has bombed their water system, sewage system, energy grid, and infrastructure since 2006. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed. These inhumane actions are ultimately designed to make life so unbearable for Palestinians that they leave their homeland, as they did in 1948 and 1967. Ilan Pappe terms this agenda “incremental genocide.”
Alfred Lilienthal, an American Jew, warned America and the world about the tremendous disservice Zionists would do to Judaism. Zionists were bent on a militant strategy that was no longer necessary in a post-WWII world. But his voice fell on deaf ears.
After reading Lilienthal’s book, a 22-year veteran US Congressman, Paul Findley, wrote that the world should have taken serious note. He said, “If policy-makers in Washington had heeded Lilienthal’s warning, Jews and Arabs would have lived happily together all these years…Many thousands of people in the Middle East would have been spared violent deaths. Moreover, I believe that 9/11 would never have happened.”
Now that the West Bank has been annexed, and now that Gaza is an open-air prison, Israel has it all. They own the entire original Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. But can Israel claim to be part of the civilized world, if they give all rights to Jews and zero rights to Palestinians?
