I agree with much of Chomsky’s comments on the Middle East, the Israel lobby, Iran, etc., and I strongly disagree with most everything Dershowitz writes on the subjects.

For decades now, Jews have provided more than half of all the political funding raised by Demcorats in the US. They also give a good deal to Republicans. And they have enormous sway in US media. Add to all this, the fanatical “support” for Zionism and Israeli militarism, coming from millions of foolish US Christians.

Alan made a good point, that Jewish immigrants into Palestine had a better handle on public relations, accessing US and world opinion, etc etc etc, than did the native population.

Interesting comments. The imperatives of war, certainly, caused the British to be mixed up with the Zionist enterprise in the first place. The British feared the Germans would make a play for support of international Jewry by promising a homeland in Palestine if they won the war. This is the background to Balfour’s letter to Walter Rothschild, who was one of the very few rich Jews in Britain who supported a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine or elsewhere.

Obviously, Truman would not have had anything to do with supporting a British effort to crush the Jewish terrorists operating in Palestine after the Second World War. And Britain itself was exhausted.

I agree with you Israel should “bank its takings” and accept the borders achieved in the 1948-49 war, as permanent. Dangerous notions of “creating facts on the ground” need to be punctured.

Superpower is probably the wrong word, but I agree that the context is everything and at the time, the Jewish forces knocked the spots off anything around them. If the British and US had been minded to defeat the formation of Israel at the time they could have done so, but it would have been a major undertaking, and against the backdrop of the Holocaust of course.

I don’t disagree with Shlomo Ben-Ami at all really. There is no doubt that if the British had not got mixed up with the Zionist enterprise in the first place there would be no Israel. The British certainly smashed the Arab resistance in Palestine, and that paved the way for the Jewish Agency in the years following. However, and I don’t think Ben-Ami disputes this, the British categorically changed policy away from any kind of Jewish state in 1939. It’s just that what had gone before was enough for it to happen anyway. Also, I think when he talks about the two-stage war, I interpret that as the war fought in 1947-48 before the Arab armies arrived, and the war fought after the declaration of the state of Israel on 15 May 1948, after which the Arab armies finally started helping the Palestinians.

I would also say something that pertains to Kooshy’s point earlier about the demographic makeup of the Jewish population. They were much more culturally familiar with the way the world powers operated than the locals, and could play the political and diplomatic game much more adeptly. So when Ben-Ami talks of growing political awareness in Israel, I would argue this was a significant issue in events before 1948 too.

Finally, I know there are many Israelis who can see the dangers of the current direction of policy. If the Israelis lose the goodwill of the US people, there is only the threat of power to maintain their position, and then they will end up as everybody’s enemy. That will be an untenable position for them. Also, it would be wise to bank the ill-gotten gains up to 1967, because so far the Israelis have managed to avoid any close scrutiny of 1948. However, it may be that peace is not truly possible until the Israeli people themselves are prepared to honestly appraise that period too.

What astonishing nonsense you found! Israel as a “superpower” in 1948. Total rubbish. The Jewish terrorists were effectivel in slaughering enough Palestinian civilians to cause a stampede, but this is hardly the work of a “superpower”.

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/democracy-now-debate-with-finkelstein-shlomo-ben-ami/

“SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, for all practical purposes, a state existed before it was officially created in 1948. The uniqueness of the Zionist experience, as it were, was in that the Zionists were able, under the protection of the mandate, of the British mandate, to set up the essentials of a state — the institutions of a state, political parties, a health system, running democracy for Jews, obviously — before the state was created, so the transition to statehood was a declaration, basically, and it came about in the middle of two stages of war, a civil war between the Israelis and the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine and then an invasion by the Arab armies. The point that I made with regard to the war is that the country, to the mythology that existed and exists, continues to exist mainly among Israelis and Jews, is that Israel was not in a military disadvantage when the war took place. The Arab armies were disoriented and confused, and they did not put in the battlefield the necessary forces.

So, in 1948, what was born was a state, but also original superpower in many ways. We have prevailed over the invading Arab armies and the local population, which was practically evicted from Palestine, from the state of Israel, from what became the state of Israel, and this is how the refugee problem was born. Interestingly, the Arabs in 1948 lost a war that was, as far as they were concerned, lost already in 1936-1939, because they have fought against the British mandate and the Israeli or the Jewish Yishuv, the Jewish pre-state, and they were defeated then, so they came to the hour of trial in 1948 already as a defeated nation. That is, the War of 1948 was won already in 1936, and they had no chance to win the war in 1948. They were already a defeated nation when they faced the Israeli superpower that was emerging in that year. “

I too am fascinated by the history of the Levant. And the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War would have resulted in the complete carve-up of Anatolia by the victorious powers, by Ataturk fought a new war to overturn the outcome of the previous world war, and Turkey as we know it today was the result.

I might mention that one reason the French tried to keep South Vietnam independent, and separate from North Vietnam, in 1954, was the Catholic interest in the south, particularly among large landowners and commercial interests that were French or Frenchified (French by cultural, or mixed descent). France wanted to protect and enhance the Christian interest in Lebanon.

Thanks, and you of course are very welcome. Obviously, I agree with Alan that the interests of the US are compromised by American support for Israel, and that the Israel lobby and US news media do an excellent job of deceiving the American public on this issue. They have to, otherwise the numerous stooges of the Israel lobby in the US Congress would be sent packing by the voters.

If Britain had been able to work its own desire in Palestine, there would not have been an “Israel” carved from Palestine. Ironically, as you mention, the Israelis are putting the entire programme at risk, by failing to end the occupation of the West Bank. Thus, foolish “supporters” of Israel in the US are creating the primary threat to Israel’s long-term stability, because they in effect prevent a resolution of the problem.

On a finishing note, I would like to remind you that it is not just you guys in USA, there are a lot of people in Israel, who believe that Israeli policies of the past two decades have been harmful; not just to corporate America’s interests but also to the strategic interests of Israel itself. The best example of such people would be perhaps Shlomo Sand.
However, they don’t dispute that Israel was the creation of the “West”, nor do they deny that Israeli interests have “pretty much” always matched those of the first British and then the corporate USA; but rather they argue that, as Brzezinski put it best, we are dealing with people who have gained political awareness and it is no longer that easy to force whatever we want with minimal cost. And as a result they believe that it is in Israel’s strategic interests to go back to 1967 borders and make a permanent peace with the Arabs, rather than destabilizing the regimes of the puppet dictators in this region and perhaps having to deal with new Bin Ladens in our imminent neighbourhood (Egypt and Jordan) over a piece of land called “the West Bank”! Especially when we have already achieved the most important part of whatever we wanted!
Also they point to the demographics of the occupied lands and indicate that a “single state” solution could bring the end of Israel in the upcoming two or three decades.