ISRAEL
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- JACOB'S DREAM AND A WARNING TO ISRAEL
- :: Speaking of Jacob, the Bible states in Genesis 28: "...And
he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the
top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God
ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood
above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father,
and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou
liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And
thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt
spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north,
and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families
of the earth be blessed..." [Ed note: God foretold in
Genesis that the land of Israel belongs to them and the God plans
to return it to them if they repent and humble themselves, which
hasn't happened. The Gentiles are waiting patiently. God will
lose patience one of these days, and the time is near.]
- In Leviticus 26 God warns: "But if ye will not hearken
unto me, and will not do all these commandments; And if ye
shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments,
so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break
my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint
over you terror,.. I will send a faintness into their
hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a
shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing
from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before
a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power
to stand before your enemies. And ye shall perish among the
heathen, ..
- Addressing Israel God reminds them: "If they
shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of
their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against
me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that
I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them
into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised
hearts be humbled, and they then accept
of the punishment of their iniquity: Then will I remember
my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and
also my covenant with Abraham will I remember.."
- For the whole Bible study click on: http://bible-studies.cephasministry.com/jacobs_dream.html
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- WHO CONTROLS US FOREIGN POLICY?
:: MIDEAST May 14, 2003 by Mitchell Plitnick - The comments by
Rep. James Moran (D-VA), just before the invasion of Iraq, regarding
the role of the Jewish community in the march to war set off
a small firestorm in Washington. Moran’s statement that
"if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community
for the war with Iraq, we would not be doing this" was obviously
offensive to many Jews, especially the great many who were opposed
to the war. More than just ascribing a pro-war stance to an entire
community (one which, according to polls, was well in line with
the general population in its stance on the war and less supportive
than other groups of Americans of European descent), the statement
carries with it the implication that there is Jewish control
over American policy, a control that subverts US policy to its
own ends. On that level, the reaction of many Jews is correct.
- :: Yet it does not suffice to simply react to such a comment
without a deeper analysis of what leads to such views. It is
insufficient, and in the long term quite dangerous, to write
such views off as nothing more than irrational hatred, and ignore
any basis it might have in fact, whatever one might think of
the interpretation of those facts. We need to ask what evidence
might support these views, if we hope to refute them. Furthermore,
as American Jews it is also incumbent upon us to examine these
questions fairly.
- :: No one would deny that American Jews certainly work very
hard to have influence well out of proportion to our numbers
in the general population when it comes to matters regarding
the Middle East. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the
notion that a Jewish 'cabal' has some sort of mystical sway over
the policymakers in Washington holds in it a familiar ring of
classical anti-Semitism. On the other hand, this notion that
the war on Iraq was executed at the behest of Jews and for the
sake of Jewish interests does not come out the ether. And while
it is likely the case that some of the proponents and adherents
to this idea are indeed motivated by hatred of Jews, it is also
true that many also do so because of the evidence. We need to
consider if that evidence is incomplete, deceptive or persuasive
and, as Jews, to act accordingly.
- :: The most obvious link that is repeatedly drawn is the
fact that many of the key people in the Bush administration responsible
for our Iraq policy have a long history of backing, and even
recommending some of the most draconian Israeli policies. Richard
Perle and Paul Wolfowitz are the people most commonly identified
with this small group of neo-conservative hawks, and they are
two of the primary formulators of Bush administration policy
with regard to Middle East. There is also the fact that Israel
has, from the earliest rumblings of war on Iraq been the most
vocal supporter of military action against Iraq on the part of
the United States and Britain. Underlying all of this is the
near-mythical status the pro-Israel lobby enjoys. All of these
deserve careful scrutiny to see where Israel and its supporters
fit in to policy formation, but one can see easily how these
factors lead to a conclusion like that of Jim Moran.
- :: Yet, if we are ever to hope to see American foreign policy
wrested from the hands of those who hold it now, we must not
ignore the fact that Israel, its supporters and its political
position are integral parts of foreign policy formation. What
we need to do is understand where and how they fit in, and to
what degree they hold sway. In order to do that, we need to first
review how the current state of affairs came about.
- :: It is an obvious truism that American policy toward Iraq
and American policy regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict are
both parts of a larger American foreign policy regarding the
Middle East. In 1945, the US State Department referred to the
vast oil reserves of the Middle East as ''a stupendous source
of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in
world history . . . probably the richest economic prize in the
world in the field of foreign investment." No major power,
let alone a superpower, would ever willingly allow the fate of
such a 'prize' to be left to political chance or ideological
whim, let alone to the capricious interests of those who actually
live on the land above that great prize. If this was the case
in 1945, how much more so is it now, with the global economy
being even more dependent on oil now than it was half a century
ago, and with anticipation that reserves may run dangerously
low within a few decades?
- :: Indeed, it can hardly escape one’s notice that the
current administration is stocked with people with major interests
in mid-level oil companies 'companies which might well have prime
access to some of the world’s largest reserves, and, subsequently,
may become considerably less 'mid-level'. But we ought not only
look at the prurient self-interest of a few people in the administration,
neither for greed nor for fanatical ideological devotion. The
large contracts handed out to American corporations to 'rebuild
Iraq' were an inevitable consequence of any war, whether fought
for legitimate reasons (whatever those might be) or not. Instead,
we need to see the entire US policy in the Middle East in the
context of the US desire to control 'one of the greatest material
prizes in world history'. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=3619
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- ROAD MAP TO WHERE?
:: MIDDLE EAST INTERVIEWS May 22, 2003 - by Toufic Haddad and
Eric Rudder - SECRETARY OF State Colin Powell traveled to the
Middle East and Europe last week to promote the newly released
"road map" to Middle East peace. But all of the State
Department’s spin can’t disguise the fact that Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejects the basic framework--and
won’t even utter the words "road map" in public.
- Barely two weeks after the U.S., United Nations (UN), European
Union (EU) and Russia released their plan with much fanfare,
it’s practically a dead letter--like so many other plans
released since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993.
:: TOUFIC HADDAD lives in Ramallah and co-edits Between the Lines,
a journal that both Palestinians and Israelis opposed to Israel’s
occupation of Palestine contribute to. He spoke to Socialist
Worker’s ERIC RUDER about the "road map" and the
larger context in which Palestinian resistance to Israel’s
occupation is taking place.
- DOES THE "ROAD MAP" PROPOSE A VIABLE STRATEFY FOR
PEACE?
:: I THINK it’s safe to say that the road map is not only
not a viable strategy for peace, but that it’s actually
a non-starter--a document stillborn in both its vagueness and
structural flaws that repeats all the problems of prior proposals.
And in some cases, it’s actually far worse. As such, it
is destined in my opinion to the same fate as Oslo.
- :: First, it’s important to point out that in order
for its backers to all agree to sponsor the road map, it had
to leave so many things undefined that it doesn’t say much.
Every party--and with the respect to the Palestinians, I’m
talking about the Palestinian Authority (PA) and not the people--can
look at the road map and see what it wants to see. Each side
sees the potential to fulfill its own goals, despite the fact
that these visions are irrevocably at odds.
- :: At the same time, the road map also lays out some things
very clearly. In particular, it carefully adheres to the Israeli-American
understanding of the causes of the current conflict--that peace
can "only be achieved" when there is "an end to
[Palestinian] violence and terrorism" and when "the
Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against
terror and willing to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance
and liberty."
- It is not surprising that the primary target of the road
map is the Intifada. This popular uprising--with both armed and
unarmed acts of defiance against Israel’s illegal occupation--was
the masses’ sole alternative. You have to realize that PA
officials were prepared to agree to a complete capitulation of
national rights at the negotiating table.
- :: The Intifada was able to unmask the "peace process"
for what it was--a guise to build more settlements, create "facts
on the ground" and get the PA to police resistance to these
plans. In so doing, the Intifada also served to de-legitimize
the PA officials who brokered these "peace" deals--and
to reassert the power of the masses whose national and individual
rights were in the process of being sold down the river. The
Intifada forced Israel’s hand, establishing that if Israel
is to deepen its occupation and colonialism and to destroy the
Palestinian aspiration for self-determination, this must be done
in the name of the occupation and not in the name of peace.
- :: This last point is somewhat important--because the road
map clearly desires to recreate and resurrect more "process"
even if it doesn’t lead to "peace." This has been
the American strategy in the "peace process" since
its inception in the early 1970s, whereby the process is more
important than the peace. Process means time, and time means
settlements and new facts on the ground that constrict the options
for Palestinians and undermines the call for fulfilling Palestinian
national rights.
- :: Sure, there are a few small carrots--more like bones--thrown
out to the Palestinians: an end to settlement expansion, removal
of settlement outposts built after the beginning of the Intifada,
a "provisional state." But all this--aside from being
incredibly vague, even absurd--will only come about after the
old colonialist self-policing is resurrected, which in reality
means that the Palestinians have to tie their own hands and hand
the initiative to Israel even before negotiation on real issues
has begun.
- :: As far as Israel is concerned, the best case scenario
is a collaborationist Palestinian leadership that signs a deal
doing away with the international resolution to end the occupation
and concedes the right of return for Palestinian refugees--thus
affirming the Zionist strategy of creating "facts on the
ground" and "might makes right." In the worst-case
scenario, the road map is sufficiently vague to be delayed indefinitely,
allowing for the expansion of settlements, the herding of more
Palestinians onto less land and the consolidation of a matrix
of control.
- Ultimately, all of this makes negotiations irrelevant. Take,
for instance, how the road map proposes to resolve the question
of Palestinian refugees--perhaps the most important Palestinian
national question. According to the road map, there must be "an
agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution to the refugee issue."
- What the hell is that supposed to mean? Which is it? Because
it’s clear that each of these qualifying adjectives has
completely different ramifications. A "just" solution
would imply implementing UN resolution 194. A "fair"
solution is somewhat of a retreat from a "just" solution,
though It’s not clear exactly what that would mean and who
would get to interpret "fair."
- :: Finally, it’s not clear what a "realistic"
solution is or who gets to decide what’s "realistic."
"Reality," after all, can be changed by political will--in
fact, that’s how Israel largely came into being in the first
place. It’s safe to say that a "realistic solution"
is advantageous to those who are capable of changing the "reality,"
so this ends up being a concession to Israel’s dominant
military power and its backing by the world’s only superpower,
the U.S.
- Thus, the road map is an attempt to return to the old model.
It’s an attempt, if you will, to "put humpty dumpty
back together again," after Israel used everything in its
arsenal to liquidate the Intifada. It is designed to punish the
Palestinians for daring to break the mold of the conflict--an
endless process, whose temporariness has become a form of permanence,
a treadmill where the weak party impotently runs around calling
for a genuine implementation that can never be, owing to the
balance of forces against it.
- :: Tragically, this charade continues to find partners on
the Palestinian side, though the Intifada has greatly weakened
this current in Palestinian society.
- The road map is nothing more than old wine in new bottles.
What the imperialists in Israel and the U.S. don’t realize,
or don’t wish to see, or seek the road map to "address"
(read: liquidate), is the fact that with the outburst of the
Intifada two years ago, the Palestinian masses are boycotting
this wine. They have their eyes on a new paradigm, which at present
may seem somewhat inchoate, but nonetheless will inevitably arise
from the sacrifices of the past two-and-a-half years.
- :: WHO IS Abu Mazen, and what does his new role as prime
minister say about what’s going on within the PA?
- :: ABU MAZEN is one of the few remaining, first-generation,
Fatah party founders, though he certainly didn’t have much
clout or an independent following within Fatah, unlike like former
leaders such as Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad, and Abul Hol. In fact, Palestinians
only became familiar with him after the Oslo agreement.
- As a signer of Oslo, Abu Mazen received a number economic
"incentives" and engaged in shady dealings to enrich
himself. He was associated with establishing large private corporations
in the names of his sons to profiteer from a monopoly on basic
necessities. He has a massive beachside mansion in Gaza--which
more than once has had demonstrators throwing rocks at it.
- :: The list goes on. Abu Mazen and those like him are the
very figures delegitimized by the outbreak of the Intifada.
- :: He is perhaps most infamously known for his participation
in what became known as the 1996 Beilin-Abu Mazen Accord. This
was essentially a negotiated final status solution with Yossi
Beilin, a Labor Party member of Israel’s parliament. When
its terms were leaked to the media, it confirmed Palestinian
fears that the negotiations were leading to a wholesale sell-off
of Palestinian rights, including no right of return and no return
to the 1967 borders before Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza.
In the plan were details that exposed the gerrymandering gymnastics
of expanding the borders of Jerusalem to include the village
of Abu Dis, which would then be renamed Al Quds (Arabic for Jerusalem)
and would serve as the capital of the new Palestinian state.
- :: Abu Mazen’s appointment as prime minister signifies
the direct meddling of the U.S. and the Europeans--and their
goal of using the "road map" to create the conditions
for Arafat’s final demise. Abu Mazen represents the competing
wing of the elite within Fatah and the PA that has no patience
for Arafat’s longstanding strategy of simultaneously pursuing
contradictory tracks--a strategy that serves Arafat’s own
interest in maintaining power.
- Abu Mazen is openly against the Intifada, condemning it publicly
and calling it "armed chaos." Instead, he prefers to
ingratiate himself to the U.S., seeing the U.S. as the savior
of the Palestinian cause.
- :: He believes that the overall vision for Palestinians must
be changed. Instead of struggling to achieve national rights,
he believes that it’s necessary to integrate into the global
economy--and that he and his hangers-on will then serve as the
chief collaborators with Israel and the globalization process.
- It’s a cruel twist of irony that Abu Mazen has ascended
to power under the guise of "democratic reform." Even
pro-American surveys don’t give him a popularity rating
among Palestinians higher than 3 percent. He’s precisely
the kind of character that Palestinians--who have long sought
genuine reform--would have long ago "reformed," that
is, pushed aside.
- :: But the fact is that Abu Mazen has developed strong ties
with the Americans, Europeans and elements of the Israeli establishment
throughout the Oslo years. He has thus been propped up and groomed
as the "only acceptable candidate for prime minister"--in
the democratic rhetoric of the EU--if another round of peace
process theatrics is to have the blessings of imperialism.
- :: HOW HAS the U.S. victory in Iraq changed the attitude
of Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party towards the Intifada? What
do you expect from the Israeli government in the coming months?
- :: THOUGH I am no expert on Israeli politics, it’s clear
that the U.S. campaign in Iraq represents a victory of "might
makes right" logic, which has been the logic of Zionism
since its inception.
- No doubt, the victory in Iraq will make the Israeli establishment
feel comfortable with deepening and entrenching its racist and
colonial policies. We see this on a daily basis. Israel has arrogantly
continued its policy of assassinating and arresting activists,
demolishing homes, conducting massive incursions into Gaza, laying
cornerstones for new settlements, and even releasing plans for
constructing an eastern wall--all since the publication of the
road map.
- :: The campaign in Iraq may not have permitted Sharon and
company to implement the final transfer of the Palestinians out
of Palestine--perhaps because of pro-Palestinian awareness raising
campaigns, perhaps because of American orders to Israel, perhaps
both. But it is clear that it allowed for further consolidation
of Israel’s second choice--the strengthening of its apartheid
regime across historic Palestine. We can thus expect that this
approach will continue with increased speed before the road map
theatrics come to an end.
- :: THE QUICK U.S. victory in Iraq--especially coming after
a brief period when the Pentagon was set back by unexpected resistance--must
have been a blow to the morale of opponents of imperialism in
the Middle East. Has it led to people lowering their sights on
what kind of political change to organize for?
- :: THIS IS a very interesting and important question. I don’t
believe the result of the war will lead to a lowering of sights,
but rather will bring about "a clearing of vision."
- This has many dimensions to it. First, the active role that
Arab governments played in the assault--both openly and secretly--has
put in perspective the real dilemma facing anti-imperialist forces,
especially in the pro-Western countries of Jordan, Egypt and
the Gulf states.
- :: Some commentators correctly noted that there weren’t
large demonstrations in the Arab world protesting the war, as
there were in Europe and the U.S. But they wrongly interpreted
why this was the case.
- The demonstrations in Europe, in as much as they were in
opposition to the policies of their governments and against U.S.
imperialism, were in one way or another an affirmation of the
systems themselves, despite the flaws of these systems. But in
the Arab world, no such legitimation of these systems exists
in the first place. In fact, you have entire countries with no
historical basis that are themselves the creation of imperialism.
- The anti-imperialist forces are becoming conscious of the
fact that the Arab world is in need of far more than their governments
saying that they are against the war. There needs to be a more
fundamental transformation--a transformation that they are not
prepared for and don’t necessarily know how to advance,
given the complexities of the systems of control that oppress
them.
- :: It’s not clear that this has been entirely thought
out yet, but my guess is that there will be an internalization
of the lessons that the anti-imperialist Arab camp is accumulating.
- :: First and foremost among these lessons is the conclusion
that the undemocratic, pro-Western, crony-capitalist model has
to be done away with. Second, there’s a realization that
the alternative embodied in the "bin Laden approach"
is not a desirable alternative.
- :: I therefore expect to see the growth of a movement that
breaks both with the corrupt Arab regimes as well as the dead-end
strategy of al-Qaeda, though this will take years to develop
and formulate. Unfortunately, here the weakness of genuine left
forces in the Arab world is laid bare, greatly impeding the formation
of a current that understands the current structure of oppression
and exploitation and how to advance an alternative to it.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=3658
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