"Fortress Israel" (Part One) By Richard Sale

“British parliament’s decision this week to grant ‘Palestine’ diplomatic recognition is essentially a symbolic move since Britain’s government, headed by Prime Minister David Cameron, is not obligated to translate it into actual government policy.

“Passage of the motion, in contrast, legitimates (sic) the position that Israel is to blame for the conflict and that Palestinians are the weak side, in need of international support for their cause.” So said a recent article in The Guardian. 

 This new fact deserves some consideration and to understand it, we need to peruse an earlier time. 

The Jews of Europe had long been bossed, exploited, mistreated, humiliated, persecuted, and murdered. The Jews were among the best and brightest of the European peoples.  Nietzsche with great eloquence stomped on the anti-Semitism of his day by asserting just that, but clearly the Jews have had a tragic history. They had been thrown out of Spain; there were pogroms that targeted the Jews in Russia, and the culmination of Europe’s anti Semitism came with Hitler’s homicidal plan to murder them in an industrial scale, a crime so horrible that to think of it floods one’s heart with grief. That vast Nazi massacre destroyed the members of a benevolent, talented and optimistic culture and left the survivors with a sense of having been deeply wronged that nothing could make right.  “One can do nothing before the permanent soul of a race,” said Gustav le Bon, and that race not only survived, it flourished by establishing its own state in Palestine. 

“Nothing is more terrible than a body of men who have been afraid and are afraid no longer,” said Gustave le Bon.  The new state of Israel was not simply going to be settlers; they were going to be conquerors as well engaging in a constant battle to survive. 

In 1948, Israel had won its first war against the ill-disciplined, poorly trained Arab armies. Now, conscious of their uncertainty of their fate in the region, the Israelis spoke as masters of the situation.  Suddenly there was no one more aggressive in war than Israel’s military. They were aware of the helpless and slaughter by the Germans, but unfortunately, the wounds to self-love are the most difficult to heal.  Israel’s military were going to triumph at whatever cost and they would triumph because of their unending pugnacity and intellectual resourcefulness.  Their aim was to make the Zionist enterprise to succeed at all costs. “We will make a cemetery of France,’ said Carrier, “rather than fail to regenerate it in our own way.” 

Or as Robespierre put it, “The republic is the destruction of everything opposed to it.” That was the attitude of Israel’s military culture. It was to be inexorable, tireless, and endlessly devious. 

Israel knew that its neighboring Arab nations were resentful and very hostile, but their armies were divided, amateur and poorly trained, and Israel’s military was on the march. From the first, Israel’s military tried to concentrate the entire nation’s power in itself. The people is of a nation are far less excitable than a crowd; but certain events – national insults or threats of an invasion – can arouse it instantly. It is not always easy to explain the acceleration of certain sentiments under the influence of a constant, exciting cause but the Arabs provided the acceleration. Constant cross border attacks had killed any sympathy between the two groups, and to Israel, the presence of Arabs and the threat they posed could rouse Israel’s military in an instant. A lot of Israel’s aims embodied a desire for vengeance or conquest. This feeling can be seen in Israel’s unending pugnacity. Within just a few years after the victory of 1948, Israel became cocky and believed that it owed nothing to anybody. Being the Chosen to rule the nations of the Earth thanks, to a biblical promise, apparently exonerates you from playing by rules unless they are gamed on your favor. 

To take an example. 

 

In 1954, Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, had resigned in a sniffy huff over a difference of opinion, and into power came Moshe Sharett, a mild idealistic man.  Ben-Gurion and the Israeli military leaders like Gen. Moshe Dayan were canny predators, gazing at the map of the region and instantly seeing in it targets of opportunity, incessantly on the lookout for places where, thanks to the weakness of the Arabs, Israeli military would be able to conquer lands for Israel and push the Arabs back. By contrast, Sharett saw the Arabs as people Israel had to befriend in order to be secure. 

But that year, 1954, Israel’s government saw its neighbors as low hanging fruit to be harvested, however abrupt and brutal the means. Syria was unstable – there had been military coup there, and the Arab Renaissance Party, the Ba’th, was now in power. The Israeli Defense Minster, Pinhas Lavon, wanted Israeli forces invade Syria to gain more water, land and security for Israel. 

Sharett dismissed notion out of hand. 

Then Ben-Gurion sent a letter to the Sharett government. He was out of the government and living in the Negev, but he took it upon himself to suggest that the instability of Syria offered the perfect opportunity to strike the Arabs in Lebanon. He wanted to create a Christian-Israeli alliance to size territory up to the Litani River, a move, he said, which would give Israel strategic depth to the north. 

Sharett rejected this outright. Lebanon was an Arab state. Why would it isolate itself by establishing ties with Israel? 

Soon a new target soon presented itself. The Syrian turmoil had been followed by an upheaval in Egypt. The great Egyptian nationalist, Gamel Abdel Nasser, had come to power. Lavon, always on the alert to molest or defeat the Arabs, said Israel should strike north and south in Egypt – in the south they would seize Gaza, and in the north they would seize the demilitarized zone at the Syrian frontier. 

Sharett once again rejected the notion. He was increasingly concerned that a nation that aspired to be to stand as a moral beacon for the world could produce a generation of youth who were “become so enamored with ‘murdering consciously and in cold blood,’” according to historian Pat Tyler. 

Sharett was not alone in trying to keep peace with the Arabs. Sharett had valuable supporters, mainly President Eisenhower and Sec. of State, John Dulles. Ike, having seen and participated in two world wars, wanted to use diplomacy and conflict resolution to establish peace in the Middle East. Sharett did not want a war with the Arabs, and Ike didn’t either. 

“We are not rendering anyone assistance to start a war to indulge in conflict with others of our friends,” he said. The Israeli military ignored him. 

The problem was that Sharett did not control Israel’s military. Ben-Gurion and Gen. Moshe Dayan did. Both of them were intense nationalists, and both of them were cold-blooded and uncaring. Dayan had been fighting Arabs since he was a little boy. To these men, nothing mattered except but the narrow and brutal interests of Israel, which they saw as a warrior state. A pitiless pugnacity sat in the root of their natures. It would appear that they had spent their lives getting rid of any capacity to feel anything resembling a conscience. To them, the success of Zionism was to be judged by its triumphs, not its morality. When it came to the Arabs, the ideals of both these men yearned to overpower, undercut, weaken and take. In other words, in 1954, what you had in Israel was a government that resembled a gang of thuggish burglars who reconnoiter a neighborhood in order to find if anyone had left their door unlocked. The goals of this group were cold, detached, ruthlessly calculating, and immune to feeling any remnant of decency when it came to making attacks on their neighbors. 

Israel’s generals always felt themselves under siege, and their attitude said, “We are fighting for our existence, and we warn people not to get in our way.” And it was unfortunate that Israel’s military tried to concentrate all the nation’s power in itself. They judged everything from the standpoint of their own self-interest; they exacerbated it or calmed it, according as it suited their purpose or they strengthened it or enfeebled it when it suited them. “Force is the supreme law,” said an Austrian diplomat. “even though one has enough of it already.” As a result, their program was unscrupulously ruthless. They knew that when naked power rules, there are no moral restraints worth having. In addition to its belligerence, Israel’s early governments were eternally dissatisfied. They always wanted more. They were conquerors from necessity and continued because of inclination and temperament. It is an old rule that when a government that enjoys some power and glory, it begins to believe that if it had a little more of them, it would be satisfied with its gains. That is mistaken. The appetite for conquest grows the more it is fed. Desires are insatiable and the infinitude of God would not been enough to satisfy them. A French historian talked of states that “without rhyme or reason gnaw away states and kingdoms as if they were Dutch cheeses.” That describes the early Israel. 

Unfortunately, what was missing in their plans was the “gravitas of judgment.” 

To Israelis like Dayan, the death of Arabs didn’t matter, and in 1954, as these men minutely scanned the horizon, looking for another pretense for renewed conflict, when another target of opportunity suddenly surfaced: Jordan. 

This was the idea of former Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. He, for me, is a man hard to like. He was very gifted, very courageous, he had grip, great force of personality, and his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest. He was a Zionist, a very dedicated one, but his mind was always plotting, scheming, and always estimating weakness and vulnerabilities, always addicted to shady operations that would lead to fresh conquests for his country. He vastly underestimated the Arabs by habit. 

Ben-Gurion thought that Jordan was an artificial state created by the British. If Jordan collapsed because of an Israeli covert operation, Ben-Gurion wanted his military to capture the Judean Hills, Samaria, Jericho, the Jordan valley, East Jerusalem and the Old City. Under Ben-Gurion, the broad rule was that a State conquers what it can, and stops only when it reaches a frontier where some other State or States exert a pressure as strong as its own.  Where that pressure is lacking, or where opposition was weak, war was the answer. Ben-Gurion felt that even in areas where the Israelis were outnumbered, the Jews would rule over the Arabs, even as a minority. That was the core principal of the Zionist enterprise, he said. That was God’s promise to the Israelites. So the Israeli launched an attack on Jordan and Jordan then launched an effective counterattack, and Israel lost 18 dead in the operation and plan ended. 

A dangerous accomplice of Ben-Gurion was Pinhas Lavon, Israel’s Defense Minister. The next target of these men was Egypt. The Great Powers were leaving the region; their departure was hastened by the new nationalist movements that were sweeping Algeria, Morocco and Egypt.  The times were unstable, and Israel was going to use that instability to expand its frontiers and seize more water resources and arable farmland for its benefit. 

Unfortunately, the United States under the leadership of President Dwight Eisenhower who was deep in talks with the towering figure of Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser, the Arab nationalist, eager to develop an alliance that would thwart Soviet designs in the Middle East.  Miles Copeland, a friend, was one of the CIA agents meeting almost daily with Nasser, and he used to talk to me about Nasser. He was a great admirer of the Egyptian. 

It was during that time that Israel then launched one of the most chicken brained schemes that I have ever heard of, “Operation Susannah.”  It was the work of Lavon, not Ben-Gurion. Lavon was a man who possessed endless fertility in deceit, mated with an indomitable an urge to weaken, exploit, conquer and destroy. His plan was to have Israel recruit Egyptian Jews, working for Israel, and have them commit acts of terrorism in Egypt which targeted British and American citizens. The aim of this was to prevent the withdrawal of British forces there. The presence of 80,000 British forces there protected the southern flank of Israel and give it defense in depth.  Nasser, of course, wanted the British out of the country. 

In other words, if Americans or British citizens were killed -- tough stuff. Never mind that America was the chief backer and supporter of Israel in the Middle East.  Israel’s ultimate goal was to bring down the Nasser government and destroy Nasser politically. Tyler doesn’t mention this, but “Operation Suzanna” was a false flag operation -- the Israelis left behind literature from the communists and the Muslim brotherhood to point the finger at the wrong parties and mislead the unwary. American targets included American Information Library which was destroyed by fire, and firebombs were also activated at some Egyptian Post Offices.

The operation was launched, and proved to be a disaster. No Americans or British were killed, but most of the Israeli military teams were arrested after Philip Natanson, one of the Israeli agents, set his clothing on fire after an explosive device exploded in his pocket and forced him to flee a movie house in agony. The Egyptian police immediately arrested him. Unfortunately, there were several serious errors in the planning and execution. When the Egyptians snatched up the ring, it collapsed quickly because the operation had recruited friends who knew each other, breaking one of the essential rules of tradecraft.  (This was an Israeli military operation, not a Mossad operation.) Under torture Natanson gave up the rest of the saboteurs who were thrown in prison. One woman agent committed suicide after being tortured. 

Dayan was eager to distract the Israeli people from the disaster. He seized on a plan to send a ship through the Suez Canal forcing the Egyptians to allow its passage or detain it. Sharett still had not been informed of Operation Susannah, and Dayan hoped that an Egyptian assault on freedom of navigation would lead to immediate condemnation by the UN Security Council. Unfortunately, the Egyptian forces boarded the vessel, and Israel rushed to UN Headquarters in New York, but their efforts were a flat fizzle.  Both Washington and London were engaged in secret talks to convince Egypt that it would be a bastion against the Soviet Union.

On Oct. 5, Egypt began to release reports of the Israeli sabotage ring whose activities had taken place over the summer. Ben-Gurion had no knowledge of the operation, and Sharett had no knowledge either.  Both had been kept in the dark. But Sharett, a man of good will and compromise, was also a politician, and he couldn’t not bring himself to say that the Jewish State had been guilty of trying to kill or maim American and British citizens for a questionable tactical gain. Instead Sharett turns loose the Israeli propaganda organs that blamed the Egyptian for trying to kill Israelis.

The Israeli public wouldn’t know of this episode for years.

It as then that Ben-Gurion returned to the Sharett government as Defense Minister, and he immediately wanted war. “He preferred war to comprise” says Tyler.  

But even as Sharett was trying to improve ties with Nasser and while Israel was secretly trying to free the eleven saboteurs, there was another disastrous mishap. 

Five Israelis entered Syria to recover some wiretap equipment that had been installed on Syrian telephone lines. The Israelis were captured, and Lavon panicked.  He ordered Israeli combat aircraft to intercept a Syrian flight, force it to land, and the plane would only be returned when the captured Israelis were freed. The Israeli government put out a false statement that Syria had violated Israeli air space. Syria accused Israel of air piracy. 

Lavon held onto the plane, allowing the single American prisoner on board to be released. Unfortunately the American said that the Syria airliner had not intruded into Israel’s air space.  Then, one of the Israelis who made the raid to recover the wiretap equipment in Syria hanged himself in his cell. 

Then a thunderbolt struck from Cairo. Two members of the Israeli sabotage unit, an Egyptian Jew, Armand Karamona, and a Mossad officer Max Bennett were reported to have killed themselves in prison, although it was suspected that Karamona had died under torture. A third member, the only woman, Victorine Ninio, twice tried to take her own life. 

Sharett went and addressed The Knesset, accusing Egypt of launching a conspiracy against innocent Jews rousing great rage in the Israeli public. 

What are we to say of all this? What one sees is a repulsive arrogance, a highhandedness that allows your nation to lie, to mislead and misrepresent, a policy led by leaders who are fertile in deceit and who are able, with a good conscience and a straight face, to lie to the world.  Even this small bit of Israel’s history reeks with the avaricious deviousness of its military leaders and the ruthless underhandedness of its methods, its sheer aggression without regard to consequences to other people. The scheme of Israel’s military at that time, embodies a bratty, evil child that simply wants what it wants without considering what it will affect.

Sharett was enormously distressed by all this. In his diary, he wondered about “the nature and fate of this nation, which is capable of such gentleness, of such a deep love of all people and of such a craving for beauty and the profound,” and at the same time capable of such “brutality,” and he asked, “which of these two souls run through the pages of the Bible, will predominate in this nation?”

(More follows in Part Two if you have the patience.) 

Richard Sale

Comments

[BabelFish]

Looking forward to part 2. This needs to be read by many more people than SST devotees.

[richard sale]

Thank you. It was hard to pull together.

Richard

[dan of steele]

fascinating, I too look forward to the next installment.

[Seamus Padraig]

My favorite Ben-Gurion quote will always be:

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

It kind of explains the central conundrum of Zionism in a nutshell: in order for Israel to survive, it must perpetually keep/put the Arabs on the defensive, usually by destabilizing their countries. If ever stability were to return to the Arab countries for any length of time, Israel would eventually be in serious trouble.

[Prisoner 6]

A good accounting of this can be found in The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim. Moshe Sharett is truly a tragic figure.

[Jonathan House]

I very much agree and have already started circulating the link.

[confusedponderer]

Jabotinsky was just as sober about it when he wrote:

"There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future ...

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage."

http://www.jabotinsky.org/multimedia/upl_doc/doc_191207_49117.pdf

Note the nowadays unfamiliar honesty when he calls what Israel does by its proper name: Colonisation.

He makes another obvious point - that the Arabs are the **natives** in Palestine. A country that has natives has a people. Israel was not a land without a people for a people without land. That phrase was hogwash from the onset.

The difference bewteen the likes of Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion and the nut that is Bibi is that the latter publicly blames the Arabs for their hostility - as if Israel just happened to find herself one morning surrounded by hostile neighbours. That nonsense echoes in the US pro-Israel crowd.

For all their thuggery, I prefer about the early Israelis that they at least were not as contemptuous of their audience as Bibi and his peers are today.

[Oofda]

No, thank you. This is excellent work and as Babelfish said, needs to read by a lot of people.

[Oscar Romero]

The history is different but the story is the same for the US, both in this country and abroad.

[William R. Cumming]

Richard many thanks for this opening to the past. My problem is that I believe that the Holocaust largely succeeded and many formally or informally colluded in its execution. The result, a religion of ZOMBIES arose post holocaust just as the NIHILISM underpinning west culture during and after WWI. We are all ZOMBIES after that event.

The rest of the world must gaze in awe at the suicidal tendencies of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims
and wonder if one or all of these "religions" will pull the rest of the world into oblivion.

The only "real" afterlife may the rate of radioactive decay!

[Cee]

Richard,

What a great article. I do need to say that many of us used to believe that Muslims were always hostile to Jews and that justified the animosity and land grabs. I feel ashamed to have been so wrong for so long.
I suggest a wonderful book...Among the Righteous by Robert Satloff. Secondly, it's outrageous that Muslims anywhere are paying for the Holocaust when they had nothing to do with it!!

LOL on the chicken brained scheme!! Most people have no clue this even happened. This is just one reason I always question what happens and if Israel has a role behind the scenes.

Another chicken brain failed scheme is mentioned here...http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/24/exposing-israel-s-most-dangerous-secret/

Again, great article and looking forward to part two!

[Cee]

Oscar,

Absolutely!

Moshe Dayan once remarked "describing Israel's relationship with the United States":

"Our American friends offer us money, arms, and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice." (Iron Wall, p. 316)

[Babak Makkinejad]

I seriously doubt that the "we" in your statement about "Zombies" is applicable beyond North America and Europe.

South & Central Americans and Spain and Portugal had nothing to do with Shoah.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Christians are also paying for that; Ramallah used to a Christian city, like so many other villages and hamlets in Palestine before Israelis got to it.

May be if Ramallah Christians were Baptists, people in US would have noticed their predicaments or been more sympathetic.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

One the men most responsible for the current irresoluble situation (except through war and more war) was King Hussein of Jordan.

By entering the war and losing the control of the Al Haram Al Sharif he single-handedly planted the seeds of religious war that is going to consume many more lives before it ends.

[jdledell]

Richard - Thanks for your essay. Looking forward to part 2. As an Israeli citizen I have to agree with what you wrote about the Israeli psych. My grandfather was Irgun and knew all the players including Ben Gurion. He always told me that Ben Gurion had no intention of living with the UN borders created in 1948 but had insisted that Israel had to also have Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem as well.

Even in the early 1940's when my grandfather was most active in the Israeli fight for independence, the waters of the Litani were always considered crucial to Israel. I fully expect Israel to move in that direction in the nest decade as the West Bank aquifers are being depleted quickly.

[will]

The Lavon affair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

Interestingly enough, I think that Lavon, the surname of Phinas Lavon, means Lebanon in Hebrew.

[Poul]

Interesting to see that Israel's policy of supporting the South Lebanon Army had old roots.

[confusedponderer]

That is probably true, too true for comfort.

[confusedponderer]

That will inevitably bring them into conflict with Hezbollah.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/10/world/fg-litani10

"Whenever Israel throughout history has thought of its northern border, they don't talk, for example, of the mountains as a border. They always think of the valley of the Litani," said Mohammed Shaya, dean of the college of social sciences at Lebanese University in Beirut.

Israel has said repeatedly that it has no designs on Lebanon's water.

"There's a policy decision at the highest level not to target those water pumping stations," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "We don't claim an inch of Lebanese sovereign territory. We don't claim a gallon of Lebanese water. We have no hostile intentions whatever towards Lebanon as a country, towards the Lebanese people or towards Lebanese natural resources."

But the enduring suspicion in Lebanon that Israel regards the water of the Litani as its own and the lands to its south as a security perimeter help explain Beirut's reluctance to accept any U.N. cease-fire resolution that does not call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the region.

At a minimum, Lebanese officials fear that the repeated attacks on water facilities -- as well as bridges, highways, power plants and roads -- signal an intention to debilitate Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon and enable a long-term Israeli presence there.
...
The Litani flows 102 miles, entirely within Lebanon. It courses south through eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, before turning sharply westward just 2 1/2 miles from the Israeli border, then heading through the coastal plain, past the town of Qasmiya to the Mediterranean, north of Tyre.

Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel, in 1919 included the Litani valley among the "minimum requirements essential to the realization of the Jewish National Home." David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, proposed including the Litani again in the 1940s on the eve of the creation of the Jewish state. In the 1950s, historical records show, Moshe Dayan, then chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and others favored occupying and ultimately annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River."

Now of course, let's for the sake of argument assume that future events would leave Hezbollah weakened.

Then Lebanon could do little to resist Israel seizing of the Litani, just as Assad cannot do anything about the Israelis having seized the Golan.

Israel's past behaviour is that they would view such weakness as an opportunity for expansion.

On security grounds, naturally. The insecurity is why they are able to grow wine on the Golan, and go there for skiing.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Lebanese have been aware of that Israelis covet Litani for the at least two generations - perhaps longer.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Another way of looking at this is that there is 200-year long war which will be fought over Palestine and in and around Palestine.

Setting the start date of the war at 1924 - after the murders of very many European Jews in Hebron by Christian and Arab Muslims - we are at its 90-th anniversary with no end in sight.

Likely, this war will go on for another 90 years and there would be changes attacks and counter attacks.

I think it is clear that since US and EU have chosen side in this war and because Arabs and now the greater world of Islam have not accepted tactical defeats as strategic ones, this , the war will not end any time soon.

I would not be surprised if there is war in 2114.

[Bandolero]

All

Those interested in the treasure trove of Moshe Sharett's notices about that time in history I'ld like to recommend this to read:

ISRAEL'S SACRED TERRORISM - A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents. Foreword by Noam Chomsky

http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/essays/rokach.html

[Origin]

Babak,

You are probably correct in your view that this is a centuries-long war over greater Palestine and the Levant, but your start date is at least 26 years late. One can easily argue that this war began at least as early as 1896 with a declaration of war by Theodore Herzl with the publication of his pamphlet, The Jewish State.

[richard sale]

I would agree. He was a man of very generous impulses and was thwarting constantly by Ben-
Gurion. The Israeli military destroyed him.

Richard