'Hot button topics' don't come any hotter than Israeli security. A thread I started on
ATSNN about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's calling for Israel's
destruction is now currently in
ATS's Top 100 Most Replied Threads list. In this
Op/Ed I seek to stimulate interest in correcting the prevailing popular belief that Israel is a hapless victim of Arab aggression. This Op/Ed doesn't
even pretend to be comprehensive, it should be treat as a teaser to this very expansive topic. The main tenet of this Op/Ed is that Israel has
instigated and harassed its Arab neighbours as a concerted effort to facilitate its expansion and suppression of Palestinians since the creation of
Israel.
I bring a revelation that a few here will already know, a smaller few will now accept and that the vast majority will furiously and hysterically
reject:
Israel has deliberately instigated every single war it has engaged in.
The Israeli political /military establishment never seriously believed in an Arab threat to the existence of Israel. On the contrary, it sought
and applied every means to exacerbate the dilemma of the Arab regimes after the 1948 war. The Arab governments were extremely reluctant to engage in
any military confrontation with Israel, yet in order to survive they needed to project to their populations and to the exiled Palestinians in their
countries some kind of reaction to Israel's aggressive policies and continuous acts of harassment. In other words, the Arab threat was an
Israeli-invented myth which for internal and inter-Arab reasons the Arab regimes could not completely deny, though they constantly feared Israeli
preparations for a new war.
[...]
The Israeli political/military establishment aimed at pushing the Arab states into military confrontations which the Israeli leaders were invariably
certain of winning. The goal of these confrontations was to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming the Zionist state into
the major power in the Middle East.
[...]
The use of terror and aggression to provoke or create the appearance of an Arab threat to Israel's existence was summed up by the then "number two" of
the Zionist state's hierarchy:
"I have been meditating on the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and on the many clashes we have provoked which cost
us so much blood, and on the violations of the law by our men-all of which brought grave disasters and determined the whole course of events and
contributed to the security crisis".
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
However, the prevailing popular belief runs contrary to the truth. We are told by our politicians, our teachers, our newspapers and our history books
that Israel has been forced into protecting its national security from acts of unprovoked Arab aggression. This is a lie that has been fabricated for
more than half a century.
The majority of the information I am basing this Op/Ed on comes from a book by Livia Rokach on the personal diaries of Israel's Second Prime Minister;
Moshe Sharett
Sharett became Prime Minister following the retirement of Ben-Gurion. Considered to be a moderate, he advocated diplomacy with neighbouring
states, but was quickly displaced again by Ben-Gurion.
Moshe Sharett served as Foreign Minister (1956), and then became the Chairman of the Jewish Agency until 1960.
Moshe Sharett Wiki
The Personal Diary, which Moshe Sharett wrote from October 1953 to November 1956 covers the last years of his political activity as Israel's
first foreign minister, including the two years in which he replaced Ben Gurion as the prime minister. It then extends over the first fifteen months
of the tormented inactivity following his political demise. Moshe Sharett stopped writing his diary in the middle of a phrase on November 29, 1957.
His last notes identify one of his previous collaborators, considered a close personal and political friend, as one of the conspirators against him.
The Diary, a 2,400 page document in eight volumes, contains the daily notes and aide-memoires in which Sharett recorded current events: personal,
family, and party happenings, as well as national and international meetings of prime importance, conversations with his wife or other members of the
family alongside administrative questions regarding his ministry and comments on cabinet meetings. The intimate nature of the Diary, together with the
exceptionally authoritative position of its author, constitutes a rare guarantee of credibility. Unlike other memoirs which have come out of Israel in
recent years, and which were written for publication, Sharett's Diary hardly can be suspected of distortion, self glorification or subjectively
polemic intentions. It is not surprising at all, therefore, that Sharett's son and his family were subjected to immense pressures to refrain from
publication, or at least to submit the document to Labor Party censorship. Sharett's son Ya'acov finally decided to publish the complete
writings.
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
It is important to note that the publication of Sharett's diary was almost suppressed by his family. The contents of the diary calls into serious
doubt the intentions of Israel's government. Not only does the diary prove that Israel's founding fathers lied to the international community but it
clearly defines the logic contained in the Zionist government's actions.
I highly recommend ATSNN members research his diaries and I cannot stress enough that this Op/Ed is merely an entrée, and by no means pretends to be
a full synopsis of Israel's pretexts for war.
1948 Arab-Israeli War
Other versions or approaches to the facts have more often than not been ignored. For example, recent disclosures by Nahum Goldmann (Le Monde
Diplomatique, August 1979) have gone practically unnoticed. Goldmann, who for more than thirty years headed the pro-Zionist World .Jewish Congress,
charges that the Arabs were not consulted about the partition of Palestine in 1947, and further that their willingness to negotiate a political
compromise that might have prevented the 1948 war was vetoed and undermined by Ben Gurion before May 1948.
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
The first war Israel ever faced, which Israel calls "The Independence War" could of been avoided. According to Ben Gurion and the Zionists, the war
was a necessity. Without a war the fledgling state of Israel would of been hand-tied and confined to the relatively small tract of land granted to
them by the UN. If the World perceived Israel to be suffering unprovoked attacks from its Arab neighbours, Israel would be free to acquire
neighbouring land all under the auspices of safeguarding Israel from Arab aggression.
To ensure a climate free from the "moral brakes" that surround peace time the actions of the Israeli army had to be intentionally inflammatory towards
the Palestinians and Arabs at large. The following is an excerpt from an Israeli soldiers account of Israeli occupation of a Palestinian village (it
contains graphic content):
Killed between 80 to 100 Arabs, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one house
without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite the houses. One
commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a house he was about to blow up. . . . Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab
woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her
and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered "good guys". . . became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle,
but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remain, the better.
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
1956 Suez War
In discussing the backgrounds of the 1956 war, Nadav Safran of Harvard University, in a work that is fairer than most, explains that Nasser
"seemed bent on mobilizing Egypt's military resources and leading the Arab countries in an assault on Israel." The Israeli raid in Gaza in February
1955 was "retaliation" for the hanging of Israeli saboteurs in Egypt-it was only six years later, Safran claims, that it became known that they were
indeed Israeli agents. The immediate background for the conflict is described in terms of fedayeen terror raids and Israeli retaliation. The terror
organized by Egyptian intelligence "contributed significantly to Israel's decision to go to war in 1956 and was the principal reason for its refusal
to evacuate the Gaza Strip" (Israel- The Embattled Ally, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978).
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
Israeli secret agents carrying out sabotage operations on Egyptian soil was an act of war, an act of war initiated by Israel. When Egypt found these
saboteurs they hung them. Israel then used the hangings as a pretext to attack Egypt, along with Britain and France.
1967 Six Day War
The occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 has been described, and is still widely understood today, as an Israeli defensive
action in the face of Arab threats. Sharett's Diary offers unequivocable evidence that the occupation of Gaza and also of the West Bank was part of
Israel's plans since the early fifties. American Zionist leaders were informed about these plans in 1954, In 1955, Jewish and Arab lives were
sacrificed in a series of provocative attacks undertaken to create a pretext for the occupation of Jordanian territory. The chief obstacle postponing
this occupation was Britain's residual presence in Jordan upholding the Hashemite throne.
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
The Israelis cited a build up of Egyptian and Syrian troops on their borders with Israel as why a pre-emptive strike was necessary. However, the
Sharett diaries show that Israel had plans as early as the 50's to instigate a war whereby Israel could claim the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the Golan
from Syria and the West Bank from Jordan.
1970 War of Attrition
Following unsuccessful diplomatic efforts from all sides and Israel's failure to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 242 which demanded Israel
return the Sinai peninsula to Egypt, Egypt launched an offensive to retake its land.
The first shots of the War of Attrition were fired by Egypt when they began shelling Israeli forces on the Eastern bank of the Suez canal. Israel's
response to this was to completely destroy Egypt's main electricity supply with helicopter dropped commandos. The Israeli attack plunged Egypt into
months of black outs.
What Sharett tells us now is that a major war against Egypt aimed at the territorial conquest of Gaza and the Sinai was on the Israeli
leadership's agenda at least as early as the autumn of 1953, almost a year before Nasser ousted Neguib and consolidated his leadership. It was agreed
then that the international conditions for such a war would mature within a period of about three years. The Israeli military attack on Gaza in
February 1955 was consciously undertaken as a preliminary act of war. A couple of months later a government decision to commence a war to conquer the
Gaza Strip met with the strenuous opposition of the foreign minister, whose political liquidation was thereupon decided by the supporters of the war
policy, headed by Ben Gurion. Had the prospect of the tripartite aggression not appeared on the horizon in later months, Israel would have gone on to
attack Egypt according to its own plans, and, moreover, with U.S. consent.
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
1973 Yom Kippur War
With Israel still retaining control of the Sinai peninsula and Syria's Golan Heights, the Yom Kippur War resulted. Israel's occupation of Egyptian and
Syrian land was unacceptable to both countries and inevitably sparked the war.
Retention of this desert peninsula was solely intended to fuel further conflict with Egypt and the wider Arab community. The long standing Israeli
doctrine of baiting the Arabs as a cassus belli for expansion still remained on track.
Ben Zvi raised as usual some inspired questions ... such as do we have a chance to occupy the Sinai and how wonderful it would be if the
Egyptians started an offensive which we could defeat and follow with an invasion of that desert. He was very disappointed when I told him that the
Egyptians show no tendency to facilitate us in this occupation task through a provocative challenge on their side. (11 October 1953, 27)
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
Following the UN ceasefire that ended the Yom Kippur war Israel gained recognition from Egypt and further divided the Arab world.
1982 Lebanon War
With Egypt now neutralized by the Israeli/Egyptian peace treaty which they signed to regain the Sinai, Israel was now free to implement its
long-standing plan of expanding Israel northwards to capture Lebanese water supplies. Following Israel's invasion of Southern Lebanon, the Israelis
took control of the Litani river from Lebanon.
The 1982 "operation," as well as its predecessor, the "Litani Operation" of 1978, were part of the long-standing Zionist strategy for Lebanon
and Palestine, which this transition of the Sharett diary illuminates. In fact,that strategy, formulated and applied during the 1950s, had been
envisaged at least four decades earlier, and attempts to implement it are still being carried out three decades later. On November 6, 1918, a
committee of British mandate officials and Zionist leaders put forth a suggested northern boundary for a Jewish Palestine "from the North Litani River
up to Banias." In the following year, at the Paris peace conference, the Zionist movement proposed boundaries that would have included the Lebanese
district of Bint Jubayl and all the territories up to the Litani River. The proposal emphasized the "vital importance of controlling all water
resources up to their sources."
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
According to Sharett's diaries, Israeli plans for Lebanon included capturing the Southern Lebanese water supplies for Israel and for instigating a
Lebanese civil war. Israel would back a Christian faction of the Lebanese civil war and facilitate them to create a "free Lebanon" under Christian
control with which Israel could ally itself with.
Israel helped fund and arm the Christian militia of Major Sa'd Haddad who fought against the Lebanese government.
But the Zionist proxy "mini-state," which was set up in a border strip six miles wide and sixty miles long, was repudiated by the world
community. A United Nations force, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was mandated to help re-establish the authority of the
central Lebanese government in the South. Israel, however, defied the relevant United Nations resolution (which was supported even by the Carter
administration) and persisted in its support of Haddad. After a March 1981 agreement by the Syrian and Lebanese presidents to reassert - in
cooperation with UNIFIL - the authority of the Beirut government in the South, Israel and Haddad's militia bombarded a UNIFIL position, killing three
Nigerian soldiers (March 16, 1981).
ISRAEL'S SACRED
TERRORISM
Israel was ordered out of Southern Lebanon by the UN to which their response was to attack UN troops. None of this gels with the prevailing notion of
Israel as the embattled survivor of repeated Arab aggression and attempts to destroy their state. To put it quite simply, it has been the goal of
Israeli leaders ever since the creation of Israel to foster a climate of conflict with their Arab neighbours and to paint them as aggressors.
Our media and politicians either have succumb to these falsehoods or they are scared into not questioning them. But don't take my word for it, please
read the article I quoted in this Op/Ed. It is truly shocking to read the words of an Israeli Prime Minister describing what the Arabs have long
maintained: Israel is, and always will be, the aggressor.
Seems as if the Hashemites in Jordan never read Rokachs 63-pages small book?!? 
