Israeli–Palestinian conflict

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Concept.png Israeli–Palestinian conflict 
(Bombing,  War,  Genocide,  Perpetual war,  Strategy of tension)Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
PalestineFourMaps.png
Palestinian loss of land to Israel
TypeWar
Interest of• Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
• Eva Bartlett
• Jonathan Freedland
• David Halpin
• If Americans Knew
• Frank Luntz

For centuries there was no significant conflict between the native Jewish minority and Arab Muslim/Christian majority inhabitants of Palestine.

In the 19th century the land of Palestine was inhabited by a multicultural population – approximately 86 percent Muslim, 10 percent Christian, and 4 percent Jewish – living in peace.[1]

Within Israeli and Palestinian society, the conflict generates a wide variety of views and opinions. The majority of peace efforts have been centred around the two-state solution, which involves the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

However, public support for a two-state solution, which formerly enjoyed support from both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, has dwindled in recent years.[2]

Zionism

Why Israel Matters to Americans - AJ

The Declaration was written in 1917 by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur James Balfour, and sent to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of Britain’s most illustrious Jewish citizens. It expressed the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. So why did it take another 30 years, until the United Nations passed UN Resolution 181, for a Jewish state to finally be established? Why was the Balfour Declaration so controversial? Why was it written so ambiguously and did the British even have the right to promise the Jews a homeland in British Mandate Palestine?

In the late 1800s a group in Europe decided to colonise this land. Known as Zionists, they represented an extremist minority of the Jewish population. Their goal was to create a Jewish homeland, and they considered locations in Africa and the Americas, before settling on Palestine. [3]

Historic Palestine

At first, this immigration created no problems. However, as more and more Zionists immigrated to Palestine – many with the express wish of taking over the land for a Jewish state – the indigenous population became increasingly alarmed. Eventually, fighting broke out, with escalating waves of violence. Hitler’s rise to power, combined with Zionist activities to sabotage efforts to place Jewish refugees in western countries, [4] led to increased Jewish immigration to Palestine, and conflict grew.

UN Partition Plan

UN plan of partition

Finally, in 1947 the United Nations decided to intervene. However, rather than adhering to the principle of “self-determination of peoples,” in which the people themselves create their own state and system of government, the UN chose to revert to the medieval strategy whereby an outside power divides up other people’s land.

Under considerable Zionist pressure, the UN recommended giving away 55% of Palestine to a Jewish state – despite the fact that this group represented only about 30% of the total population, and owned under 7% of the land.

1947-1949 War

While it is widely reported that the resulting war eventually included five Arab armies, less well known is the fact that throughout this war Zionist forces outnumbered all Arab and Palestinian combatants combined – often by a factor of two to three. Moreover, Arab armies did not invade Israel – virtually all battles were fought on land that was to have been the Palestinian state.

Finally, it is significant to note that Arab armies entered the conflict only after Zionist forces had committed 16 massacres, including the grisly massacre of over 100 men, women, and children at Deir Yassin. Future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, head of one of the Jewish terrorist groups, described this as “splendid,” and stated: “As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.” Zionist forces committed 33 massacres altogether. [5]

By the end of the war, Israel had conquered 78 percent of Palestine; three-quarters of a million Palestinians had been made refugees; over 500 towns and villages had been obliterated; and a new map was drawn up, in which every city, river and hillock received a new, Hebrew name, as all vestiges of the Palestinian culture were to be erased. For decades Israel denied the existence of this population, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once saying: “There were no such thing as Palestinians.” [6]

1967 War & USS Liberty

In 1967, Israel conquered still more land. Following the “Six Day War,” in which Israeli forces launched a highly successful surprise attack on Egypt, Israel occupied the final 22% of Palestine that had eluded it in 1948 – the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since, according to international law it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, these are occupied territories and do not belong to Israel. It also occupied parts of Egypt (since returned) and Syria (which remain under occupation).

Also during the Six Day War, Israel attacked a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 American servicemen. President Lyndon Johnson recalled rescue flights, saying that he did not want to “embarrass an ally.” (In 2004 a high-level commission chaired by Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, found this attack to be “an act of war against the United States,” a fact few news media have reported.) [7]

Current Conflict

Newly-released prisoner Nelson Mandela takes a principled stand in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Social Engineering

The main change from European societies has not only come from 9-11 and is symbolic of something deeper. Facing terror attacks increasingly shown on social media in the 2000s and 2010s with 9-11, Europeans have increasingly associated Israel as a country facing similar challenges, the canary in the coalmine for European democracies. Aurore Bergé, a French parliament spokesperson for the La République En Marche! party and head of the France-Israel friendship group, said: “We have a common front with Israel: the struggle against Islamist terrorism. More than ever, it’s what brings us closer and what explains the diplomatic shift in Europe.” This result of seemingly social engineering all Muslims as enemy image is controversial as deep lobbying argument as the Mossad and US Deep state have suspicious links to individuals involved in 9-11, and over 80% of all Muslims terrorist attacks victims are Muslims themselves, despite increased European-Islamic tension regarding immigrants and the sporadically polled support of Muslims for terrorist organizations.[8][9][10][11]

Post-9/11

There are two primary issues at the core of this continuing conflict. First, there is the inevitably destabilizing effect of trying to maintain an ethnically preferential state, particularly when it is largely of foreign origin. [12] The original population of what is now Israel was 96 percent Muslim and Christian, yet, these refugees are prohibited from returning to their homes in the self-described Jewish state (and those within Israel are subjected to systematic discrimination). [13] [14]

Second, Israel’s continued military occupation and confiscation of privately owned land in the West Bank, and control over Gaza, are extremely oppressive, with Palestinians having minimal control over their lives. [15] Thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children are held in Israeli prisons. [16] Few of them have had a legitimate trial; Physical abuse and torture are frequent. [17] [18] [19] [20] Palestinian borders (even internal ones) are controlled by Israeli forces. [21] Periodically men, women, and children are strip searched [22]; people are beaten; women in labor are prevented from reaching hospitals (at times resulting in death) [23]; food and medicine are blocked from entering Gaza, producing an escalating humanitarian crisis. Israeli forces invade almost daily, injuring, kidnapping, and sometimes killing inhabitants. [24]

According to the Oslo peace accords of 1993, these territories were supposed to finally become a Palestinian state. However, after years of Israel continuing to confiscate land and conditions steadily worsening, the Palestinian population rebelled. (The Barak offer, widely reputed to be generous, was anything but. [25]) This uprising, called the “Intifada” (Arabic for “shaking off”) began at the end of September 2000.

US Involvement

Largely due to special-interest lobbying, US taxpayers give Israel an average of $8 million per day, and since its creation have given more US funds to Israel than to any other nation. [26] As Americans learn about how Israel is using their tax dollars, many are calling for an end to this expenditure.

 

Examples

Page nameDescription
2010 Gaza Freedom FlotillaA convoy delivering aid to Gaza. 9 of those aboard were murdered by the IDF.
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas WarHamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11",<a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a>while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.<a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a>
2024 Yemen airstrikesAn ongoing attack on Yemen
Gaza War (2008–09)Three weeks of assault launched against Gaza by Israel, including the use of white phosphorus, leaving over 1000 people dead and over 5000 injured.
Gaza War 2014
Israel/BordersIsrael's borders are unusual in having changed several times in living memory. Israel currently borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt on the southwest.
Yom Kippur WarA Bilderberg approved war in the Middle East to provide probable cause to increased the oil price, allowing US oil companies to cash in big time.

 

Related Quotation

PageQuoteAuthor
Sucharit Bhakdi“I admired the Israelis more than any people in the world. ... The greatest spirits were Jews, I adored them ... And now they are doing this. The people who have fled from this country [Germany], where the evil one [Hitler] was, have turned their own country into something even worse. It's unbelievable. There is no people who study better than them, but they have learned and implemented evil. And that's why Israel is now living hell.”Sucharit Bhakdi

 

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References

  1. John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the Founding of Israel - If Americans Knew
    an Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role (Los Angeles: Deshon, 1995), 48; Mike Berry and Greg Philo, Israel and Palestine (Pluto Press, 2006) p. 1; Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle, includes a number of population tables in this book, which are available in his booklet, Palestinian Refugees Right to Return and Repatriation (http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html); Justin McCarthy, author of The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate, provides detailed information on population in the excerpt “Palestine’s Population During The Ottoman And The British Mandate Periods.”
  2. "The Case for Peace: How The Arab–Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved"
  3. John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the Founding of Israel: an Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role (Los Angeles: Deshon, 1995), 47-52.
  4. In many places Zionists manipulated local Jewish populations into going to Palestine/Israel, in some cases using subterfuge and "terrorism".
    Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest, p. 37: “Commenting, author Erskine H. Childers, wrote, “one of the most massively important features of the entire Palestine struggle was that Zionism deliberately arranged that the plight of the wretched survivors of Hitlerism should be a ‘moral argument’ which the West had to accept. This was done by seeing to it that Western countries did not open their doors, widely and immediately, to the inmates of the DP. (displaced persons) camps. It is incredible, that so grave and grim a campaign has received so little attention in accounts of the Palestine struggle – it was a campaign that literally shaped all subsequent history. It was done by sabotaging specific Western schemes to admit Jewish DPs.”
    A number of authors have discuss Zionist connections with Nazis; for example:
    • Ben Hecht, Perfidy
    • Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine
    • Lenni Brenner, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis
    • Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
    • Sami Hadawi, in Bitter Harvest 1914-79, pp. 35-39, discusses the use of manipulated, sometimes invented, anti-Semitism in promoting Zionism, e.g.: “Ian Gilmour [wrote] ‘In the Arab countries, Jewish difficulties and emigration to Israel were the result not of anti-Semitism but of Zionist activities and the existence of the state of Israel.’”
    • In “The Jews of Iraq,” The Link, April-May 1998, Naeim Giladi describes Zionist activities to push Jews to emigrate to Israel. He describes this in greater detail in his book: Ben-Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews:
    “I write this book to tell the American people, and especially the American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called ‘cruel Zionism.’ I write about it because I was a part of it.”
  5. Palestinian Refugees Right to Return and Repatriation - Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict;
    George W. Ball & Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment, on p. 29: quotes a message from future prime minister Menachem Begin, head of the Irgun Zionist terrorist group, commending them on the grisly massacre of women, children, and old men at the village of Deir Yassin: “’Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack. We stand to attention in memory of the slain. We lovingly shake the hands of the wounded. Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.’”
  6. Sunday Times, 15 June 1969, quoted widely.
  7. Donald Neff, The Six Days War, Simon & Schuster
    During the Six-Day War, Israel also attacked a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 American servicemen. Many analysts believe that the fact that there were no consequences for this attack led Israeli leaders to conclude that they could commit any act of aggression without US complaint. While this attack has largely been covered up in the US media (see Alison Weir, CounterPunch, June 23/24, 2007 “American Media Miss the Boat: For USA Today, Freedom of the Press Means the Right to Report It Wrong” ), it is discussed in a number of books, including James Ennes, The Assault on the Liberty; William Gerhard, Attack on the USS Liberty; Dr. John Borne, The USS Liberty, Dissenting History vs. Official History; Stephen Green , Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel; James Bamford, Body of Secrets
  8. https://isgp-studies.com/arab-muslim-religious-beliefs-on-sharia-and-jihadism-also-including-immigrants
  9. https://www.trtworld.com/mea/overwhelming-majority-of-terror-victims-are-muslims-31586
  10. 9-11
  11. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/20/how-europe-became-pro-israel/
  12. This is touched on in: John V. Whitbeck, “What ‘Israel’s right to exist’ means to Palestinians,” - Christian Science Monitor, Feb 2, 2007
  13. Qumsiyeh, Palestinian Refugees Right to Return and Repatriation- If Americans Knew
  14. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
  15. More on the current situation and life under occupation - If Americans Knew
  16. Political Prisoners in Israel/Palestine - If Americans Knew
  17. “Absolute Prohibition: The torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees,” - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, May 2007
  18. Defence for Children International/Palestine Section
  19. Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
  20. Samidoun, Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
  21. Israeli Checkpoints and Their Impact on Daily Life - If Americans Knew
  22. Israeli Strip Searches: A Partial List - If Americans Knew
  23. 68 women gave birth on checkpoints,34 infants and 4 women died - If Americans Knew
  24. Major Israeli Invasions into the West Bank and Gaza - If Americans Knew
  25. “Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the Camp David Peace Proposal of July, 2000 and Barak’s so-called Generous Offer,” - If Americans Knew
  26. U.S. Military Aid and the Israel/Palestine Conflict - If Americans Knew
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