By Adrian Salbuchi. Israel turns 64 on May 14th. But it only seems to have made it to today thanks to unconditional life support from the US, UK, EU and powerful global Zionist lobbies.
“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four…?” memorable words sung by Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the late sixties. If Israel’s founders had asked Western Powers that question back in 1948, the answer – then and now – would be a powerful and resounding “YES!”
In those days, Britain governed the Palestine Mandate and had become increasingly wary of Zionist extremism there. The terror bombing of the King David Hotel housing the British Military Government headquarters in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, which killed almost 100 people, may have been the straw that finally broke the British Camel’s back. It was carried out by the Zionist terror group “Irgun Zvai Leumi” under Menachem Begin, later to become one of Israel’s prime ministers and a Nobel “Peace” laureate.
So, as the end of Britain’s Mandate over Palestine set for May 1948 neared, London eagerly prepared to withdraw, and just one day before that – on May 14, 1948 – Zionist leaders unilaterally created the State of Israel.
War immediately broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Since then, four major wars and countless smaller ones have pitted Israel against various combinations of Arab states. But Israel survived.
Indeed, generously fed by the West, Israel always survives. Militarily, today Israel stands stronger than ever; and yet, it has grown weaker in global popular support, even amongst Jews.
Reminiscing on Israel’s creation, president Shimon Peres was quoted in The New York Times on April 25 as saying that in spite of many odds, “…we won anyway, thanks to hidden powers. Ever since, for all of my life, I have tried to understand those immeasurable powers.”
We can help President Peres “understand those immeasurable powers” by pointing to the “people hidden behind the curtain,” whom Benjamin Disraeli – Queen Victoria’s most famous prime minister – said really run things in this world.
They certainly seem to have systematically ensured Israel is ever-fed the fullest diplomatic cover, political support, unlimited financial and economic lifelines, and the fullest military backing by the West.
An example: today Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. It has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and yet this never makes the headlines in the Western press, which is far too busy whipping up fear and war-mongering against Iran, in order to justify Israel’s threatened unilateral attack, fully supported by the US, UK and Sarkozy France.
At 64, Israel clearly continues enjoying that lifeline from the West, especially the US. So much so that many wonder whether the US promotes its Middle East agenda through Israel, or if things are really exactly the other way around: that Israel controls US policy in the Middle East through powerful lobbies and gigantic global money power clout.
As academics Stephen Walt (Harvard University) and John Mearsheimer (Chicago University) point out in “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” “Israel is the largest annual recipient of (US) direct economic and military assistance since 1976… to the tune of well over $140 billion… [Washington] has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets… giving Israel access to intelligence it denies to its NATO allies, and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.”
In addition, “Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members… (and) blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda.”
In short, “The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace” even though “Israeli officials… ignore US requests and renege on promises… to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders.”
Actually, the plight of the Palestinians was well understood from the very beginning by Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, who told Nahum Goldman, then-president of the World Jewish Congress: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country … We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
When she became prime minister, Golda Meir eloquently rounded off this view when she infamously remarked that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Ben-Gurion even acknowledged that early Zionists were hardly benevolent to the Palestinians, as the creation of Israel involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal.
But the Israel Lobby controlling US foreign policy towards Israel is not just about militant Jewish Zionists. It’s also about Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Ralph Reed, and about politicians as Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, John Bolton, Joe Biden, John McKay and Joe Lieberman, some of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will.
Naturally no small nation in the world would ever be able to get away with all of this unless it did indeed have full support from – even control over – the United States of America, ensuring that it will be “needed and fed” until it’s sixty four and far beyond.
Can the Israel Lobby’s power be curtailed?
The answer lies with the American taxpayer and voter. They must open their eyes and realize how vilely they are being misused and abused.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world can help promote this grand-awakening of American public opinion so the US stops being a powerful but intellectually-challenged proxy pawn to foreign interests that are contrary to US national interests.
Until then, Israel will continue to “get older and lose its hair,” whilst the US, UK and EU continue to “need them and feed them,” even at today’s ripe age of sixty-four…
