Opinion Archives - Page 19 of 25

Israeli Fantasy and its Genocidal War

CrossFireArabia
November 20, 2024

The paradoxical phrase, ‘running away forward’ is one of the most apt descriptions that illustrates the state of Israeli affairs now.

It seems that everything that Israel has done in the past year or so is a mere attempt to deny, distract from or escape imminent future scenarios – all of which are bleak.

Indeed, the last year has repeatedly proven that Israel’s military supremacy is no longer able to win wars or decide political outcomes.

https://twitter.com/RamzyBaroud/status/1858961626839580713

Moreover, the genocide in Gaza and the rapid theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank have exposed, like never before, the ugly face of Zionist settler-colonialism. Only those who are wholly indoctrinated or are paying no attention still argue that Israel stands for any kind of moral ideals or is a “light unto the nations”.

Also, incessant attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to marginalise, if not entirely erase the Palestinian cause have completely failed. The suffering, resistance and pride of the Palestinian people have made their cause a global one, and, this time around, irreversibly so.

Yet, despite all of this, Israeli leaders continue to drag their people into endless quests toward arbitrary destinations, making promises of ‘total victory’ and the like.

Monitoring statements by Israeli leaders and media conversations in rightwing Israeli press would leave one bewildered.

While over 55,000 Israeli soldiers have tried, but failed, over the course of several weeks to finally subdue northern Gaza, Israeli settler leaders are busy making plans to auction real estate, envisaging new settlements and beach resorts inside the destroyed Strip.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on October 21 that Israel wants to build several settlement blocks inside Gaza. But how is Israel to protect these areas over the course of months and years when they could not protect southern Israel itself just one year ago?

In the West Bank, where an armed rebellion has been brewing, but is yet to actualize on a mass scale due to the ‘security coordination’ between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu’s rightwing government is speaking of full annexation.

“The year 2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, referring to the occupied West Bank. Whether Israel turns its de-facto annexation of the West Bank into a de jure annexation or not, it will alter little of the legal status of the West Bank under international law, as an illegally occupied Palestinian territory. The same applies to the Palestinian city of East Jerusalem, which was officially annexed by the Israeli Knesset in 1980, under the so-called ‘Jerusalem Law’.

Not many in the international community are willing to accept Israel’s scheme in the West Bank, anyway, as they, save Washington, still refuse to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. In fact, the opposite is true, as determined by the International Court of Justice on July 19. The ruling, which was backed by international consensus, resolved that “the State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”. On September 17, the United Nations fully embraced the ICJ’s decision.

That aside, by annexing the West Bank, Israel would have fired the mercy shot at the PA, thus turning the entire West Bank into a platform of Palestinian popular resistance. How could Israel withstand that new war front, when it is already struggling, if not outright failing, to secure any victories in Gaza and South Lebanon?

In a recent article, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote about ‘Fantasy Israel’, a decades-long political construct that believed that the “West supports Israel because it adheres to a Western ‘value system’ based on democracy and liberalism.”

That fictional Israel has been collapsing for years, long before the current war on Gaza – though the genocidal war accelerated that process. The collapse of Fantasy Israel “has exposed cracks in the social cohesion, and in the readiness of many Israelis to devote as much time and energy to military service as they did in the past,” Pappe argues.

Israel is now under the control of a different breed of politicians, who are armed with a massive and growing super-structure of an equally close-minded and extremist intellectual base. This group is struggling with a whole different set of illusions, as they continue to convince themselves that they are winning, when they are not; that they can impose their will on the Palestinians, and the rest of the world, when they cannot; that the continuation of the war would allow them to finish a job that, in their minds, should have been finished a long time ago: the total destruction of the Palestinian people.

Since this crowd is motivated by extremist religious ideologies, they are unable to abide by any form of rational thinking, even that emanating from well-regarded Zionist figures inside Israel itself.

“This war lacks a clear objective, and it’s evident that we’re unequivocally losing it,” Former Mossad deputy chief Ram Ben-Barak said during an interview with the Israeli public radio on May 18.

None of this matters to Netanyahu and his rightwing ministers, of course. They continue to reference and recycle old religious dogmas, while fervently praying for miracles. In doing so, they insist on reconstructing a new ‘Fantasy Israel’, which, of course, is set to collapse, as fantasies often do.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Opinion

Double Standards

CrossFireArabia
November 16, 2024

Opinion

Palestine and Imperial Chaos

Dr Khairi Janbek
November 14, 2024

By Dr Khairi Janbek

When the British conquered the territory, they did not exactly know where to draw the borders of Palestine. British prime minister Lloyd George conferred with his French counterpart Clemenceau and suggested that the borders of Palestine be defined on biblical basis; in accordance with its ancient boundaries from ‘Dan to Beersheba’.

But what about the sparsely-populated territory east of the River Jordan? Although in 1915 the British promised the territory to the Sharif of Mecca in the McMahon correspondence, in the early years of British control, it remained part of Palestine, and not until 1922 did the British separate it from the rest of Palestine and named Emir Abdullah of the Hashemite dynasty as the ruler of the new country Transjordan.

Even when the borders of Palestine became clear to the British, the borders of the future “Jewish National Home” remained open to dispute. Lord Balfour’s letter spoke vaguely of the establishments ‘in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish people’ he did not refer to the whole of Palestine or any specific part of it.

Among the Zionists, the borders of Palestine were just as blurred. The ideal borders, as mapped by the Zionist delegation at the Paris peace negotiations, included south Lebanon (Northern Galilee) and a stretch of land east of the River Jordan as far as the line of the Hijaz Railway.

Weizmann continued to believe that the land east of the River Jordan should be part of the “Jewish National Home.” This was reiterated in his Congress speech 1921 stating “the questions of borders will be answered when Cis-Jordan (West Bank of the River Jordan) will be so full of Jews that we will have to expand to Transjordan.”

The right wing Israeli revisionists continued to claim until the 1950s, the whole of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River.

However, there was a brief glimmer of hope that an Arab-Jewish understanding might in fact be possible when Emir Faisal, later King of Iraq, and Chaim Weizemann signed an agreement in 1919, recognizing the right of the Jews to immigrate to Israel.

But reality on the ground created a different set factors, when Faisal’s condition of far reaching Arab independence in the region was not fulfilled, he declared the agreement no longer valid. In any case, the agreement did not include representatives of the Palestinian Arabs.

Also in the post-World War I era, another claim on Palestine was made in March 1920, when the General National Syrian Congress, declared that Palestine was nothing but the southern part of the Greater Syria State.

Dr Khairi Janbek is a Jordanian historian based in Paris and the above opinion is that of the author and doesn’t reflect crossfirearabia.com.

Opinion

Vile Man

CrossFireArabia
November 12, 2024

Opinion

Religion, Nationalism, Middle East Style!

Dr Khairi Janbek
November 5, 2024

Dr Khairi Janbek

When you consider yourself as a member of the greatest group in existence, irrespective of its characteristics, it is only natural to assume that the values of this group are the greatest, and consequently, the only valid values which are permissible to hold.

However, we must not delude ourselves, because religion cannot be neatly put in the pigeonhole as a moral, or personal spiritual force, for the very ancient nature of organised religion has given it a powerful role in defining peoples personal and group identities,

in other words, religion plays a national as well as personal, moral, and spiritual roles.

Nationalist and religious identities are both manifestations of the need for belonging, as people have the basic need to belong, a need which can be expressed in inclusive or an exclusive way leading to serious consequences.

Dualism

In the context of the Arab world, dualism has ruled supreme, the choice has always been, either religion or nationalism, but Iran, Israel and Turkey, have managed to fuse religion into nationalism. Each one of those countries, reflecting on themselves individually, thought of themselves as great nations, consequently, this meant that great nations require great religions, and not only that, but their own perspective of their own faiths can only be the true path.

The Arab world till now, shows that religion and nationalism remain irreconcilable, which makes it difficult for the Arab individual to understand Iranian, Israeli, and Turkish societies.

In fairness however, one must say that, the reluctance of any Arab state to claim representation of Islam is very likely to bring severe opposition from both Islamists and nationalists.

Therefore by separating Islam from nationalism, the individual Arab state strengthens its own brand of legitimacy, and as we see, every Arab state is comfortable with the abstract notion of an Islamic Umma (greater nation) in as much as it is comfortable with the abstract notion of Arab Umma (greater nation).

Dr Khairi Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris and the above opinion is that of the author and doesn’t reflect crossfirearabia.com.