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| Israel Shahak Articles |
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| The Continuing Aims of Zionist Policies in the Middle East |
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| Israel Shahak |
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Dr. Shahak is Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University and President of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. He is a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the real aims of Zionist policies in the Middle East (not only or even chiefly in relation to the Palestinians) and the inevitable consequences of the support, whether intentional or not, by the United States of those aims over a long period of time.
The reason for using the expression "Zionist policies" in the title is to draw the attention to the remarkable fact that the present Israeli establishment continues to pursue with remarkable constancy policies which began around 1917-22. Also, from that time up to the present, there has been a remarkable continuity in the actual composition of the ruling establishment. In spite of the many and frequent changes of the government and of the ruling parties, the new wielders of power have always been people who spent long years serving the previous regimes in military or political capacities, and presumably accepting the majority of their policies. This includes all of the more important politicians of the Likud. Yitzhak Shamir was for sixteen years in Mossad (Israel's Secret Service) under Ben Gurion and Levi Eshkol; Ariel Sharon was a favorite of Ben Gurion. Menachem Begin, as the head of the major opposition party, for many years was informed of everything and in return gave his loyal support to most of the foreign policies of Israel. Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin played the same game from 1977-84, even during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In fact, with the exception of small groups on the right and the left margins of the political spectrum, Israeli foreign policies, like the Zionist policies before them, have been governed by a consensus (as it is called in Israel) which has endured now for more than sixty years, during which time the cohesion of this basic unity has very rarely been shaken or even threatened. The Zionist establishment is in fact the oldest in the Middle East, for its continuity has never been broken, either by a revolution or by a large-scale influx of persons with a different education or outlook from the founding fathers'. During the same period, all Arab countries experienced one or both of these disruptive phenomena.
This long continuity is one of the most important components of Israeli strength. But the resulting inertia and reliance on old precedents is also a source of weakness, particularly when new policies or new approaches have to be devised. In particular, Israeli policymakers will usually view the Arab world from a static point of view and try to ignore the changes, particularly the social changes, taking place in it.
As this analysis is concerned with long-term aims, I will ignore the differences among "hawks" and "doves" within the Israeli establishment. These are less significant than outsiders suppose and are concerned mainly with means rather than ends. For example, many of the Israeli establishment "doves" opposed Sharon in 1982 because they were of the opinion that a much greater military effort should be mounted against the Syrians, or that the alliance inside Lebanon should not have been made with Phalangists, or not exclusively with them. They were especially divided over how to represent the war to the Israeli public or to world opinion. War itself was very little opposed from inside the Israeli military establishment, although everybody knew that it was coming. In a similar way in 1956, the leftist opposition within the establishment opposed the Israeli alliance with Britain and France but was of the opinion that Israel should have attacked Egypt without them and changed the regime there. In the same way, the Israeli attacks on Jordan in 1966-67 and the attacks on the Syrian airforce over Damascus airspace ("in order to change the Syrian regime" as Yitzhak Rabin, then the Chief of Staff, proudly declared) which led to the six day war were supported by the whole Israeli establishment. Of course, within this concensus there are numerous pragmatic disagreements, but for the purpose of discovering real long-term aims they can be ignored. Those aims can be discovered first, from activities of the Israeli government; second, from declarations obviously intended for the internal consumption of the Israeli establishment itself; and third, from the rich historical literature in Hebrew dealing with the history of the last sixty to eighty years, some of which is on a very high level of veracity and scholarship.
DOMINATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST
It is quite clear that the domination of the whole Middle East by Israel is the constant aim of Israeli (and before this of Zionist) policies and that this aim is shared (within the establishment) by both "doves" and "hawks." The disagreement is about the means: whether by war -- carried out by Israel alone or in alliance and on behalf of stronger powers -- or by economic domination. This can best be shown not so much by the case of the Palestinians, where the immediate expropriation may obscure the wider thrust of policy, but in the cases of Egypt, Syria and even Iraq. As early as the 1920s, all the influence of the Zionist pressure-block in Britain was pitted against the Egyptian National Movement, led then by Zaglul Pasha and the Wafd Party. Both Chaim Weitzmann and Vladimir Jabotinsky opposed what they called "British concessions" to Egyptians.
An important part of the argument about the long-term Zionist aims is the fact that the opposition of Weitzmann, the supposed "dove," was actually stronger and more adamant than that of Jabotinsky, who is usually considered a hawk. Weitzmann opposed every Arab movement, based -- as was inevitable and natural in the twenties -- on the rising Arab middle class, and he did this by propagating among his British friends a type of anti-Arab racism which can only be compared to Nazi anti-Semitic outbursts. For exmaple, Weitzmann wrote to Balfour on May 30, 1918:
The Arabs, who are superficially clever and quick-witted, worship one thing and one thing only, power and success. . . . The British authorities, . . . knowing as they do the treacherous nature of the Arab, have to watch carefully and constantly that nothing should happen which might give the Arabs the slightest grievance or ground of complaint. In other words, the Arabs have to be "nursed," lest they should stab the army in the back. The Arab, quick as he is to gauge such a situation, tries to make the most of it. He screams as often as he can, and blackmails as much as he can. . . . The fairer the English regime tries to be, the more arrogant the Arab becomes.
(quoted from the original files of the British Foreign Office in Publish It Not: the Middle East Cover-Up, by Mayhew and Adams, Longman, 1975).
The Zionist, and later the Israeli, policies of opposition to every step on the road to Egyptian independence, backed at least in private by arguments of a similar type, continued to the point of formal demands made by the newly created State of Israel to Britain not to remove its troops in the early fifties from the canal zone. The notorious "Lavon affair," in which an Israeli spy ring based on members of the Jewish Egyptian community tried to put bombs in Egyptian cinemas or in the American Library there, was similarly intended to prevent the evacuation of the British troops from Egyptian territory and to create the impression that the Egyptians are terrorists, a theme which is still used about the whole Arab world. Similarly, the aim of the 1956 Suez war from the Israeli point of view was not only the destruction of the Egyptian army or the annexation of Sinai, but the change of the Egyptian regime of that time. In fact, Lova Eliav, then and now one of the leaders of the Israeli doves, headed, by his own subsequent admission in 1972, a special task group which was intended, in cooperation with the French government and support from within the then-existing Jewish community of Cairo, to carry out a coup d'etat and put into power politicians whom Israel thought reliable. The plan was only prevented, to the great regret of Israeli "doves," because it was made behind the back of the British government of that time, which discovered it at the last moment and vetoed it.
Through this whole long period from the twenties, the Zionist movement and Israel were indeed in contact -- sometimes very intimate contact -- with Egyptian politicians who were prepared to undertake policies which would have entailed the continuation of Egyptian dependence on outside powers and its separation from the rest of the Arab world as the price of support for themselves. This aim was only achieved by Begin's alliance with Sadat, which continued long-term tendencies, with the United States being substituted for Britain and France. This was made clear in 1977-1978 inside Israel, when the real compensation for the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai was explained as being "the drawing of a wedge between Egypt and the rest of the Arab world," and, even more important, making Egypt completely dependent on yearly financial support from the U.S. Congress, where Israel holds virtual veto power, a sort of sword of Damocles over Egyptian policy.
One can say that the major difference between the so-called "doves" of the Israeli establishment and the real radical opposition is with regard to this policy. The establishment "doves" not only support it but consider that it can be made into a permanent situation, while the anti-establishment radicals understand that ultimately such policy is self-defeating in terms of Egyptian society because it increasingly alienates the Egyptian government which tries to carry it out. In addition, the American aid, over which Israel has a veto power, must be of such nature as to prevent any real development of Egyptian economy or society, as has indeed happened.
A very good recent example of this constant attitude can be found in the September 1985 issue of New Outlook, widely considered to be a "peace journal," in an interview with Professor Shimon Shamir about the Israeli achievements in Egypt made possible by the Camp David agreement and the Israeli-Egyptian peace. In the opinion of Professor Shamir, an Israeli Arabist with great influence on the government, one of the Israeli achievements is that the Egyptian army is occupied now with the construction of roads and buildings and even the baking of bread. In other words, since it undergoes little military training, it is a weak army. Can a state with a very weak army be called truly independent? Can the majority of a people desire, or long tolerate, a bread-baking army? We will return to a deeper consideration of these questions after considering Zionist policies toward other Arab countries.
An even better example is the now-revealed affair of Israeli relations with the Syrian regime of Husni Zaim in 1949-50. That very unstable and narrowly based regime wanted desperately to acquire American support, and thought that it could do so by offering to "solve" the Palestinian "problem" in the interest of Israel, by settling all the Palestinian refugees in the Syrian territory beyond the Euphrates -- that is, as far away from Palestine as possible. The scheme was vigorously pursued until the very moment when Husni Zaim was assassinated. A high-level CIA dignitary was actually present in Damascus at the time of the assassination to serve as a messenger from the Israeli government, according to a report released from the Israeli archives in accordance with the thirty-year rule of secrecy. But the most illuminating part of that affair, as it affects present Israeli policies, is the manner and the reason for its publication in spring 1985. It was published in Al Hamishmar, the paper of the Mapam Party (now formally in opposition, but really a part of the establishment), as part of an argument against Ben Gurion, who did not pursue, in the opinion of the "dovish" author, this scheme as fast as he should and so missed the opportunity for peace. I am passing over the Palestinian aspect of this scheme as being clear enough. But what about the assumption of the Israeli "doves" about Syria or the rest of the Arab world? It is obvious that any Syrian government which attempted to carry out such a policy would have become alienated from its own people, and thus completely dependent on the outside support of Israel and the United States. Even with such support, of whatever magnitude, it could not endure for long.
But for Israeli establishment "doves," this elementary point cannot be grasped, even now. Israeli policy towards Syria can only be comprehended if one understands the social fact that the whole Israeli establishment, "doves" included, not only believes in making "deals" -- such as the one described above -- with Arab regimes but also disregards the certainty that regimes which consent to such deals will become as alienated from their own people as the "Village Leagues" in the West Bank or the "South Lebanese Army" are at present.
To cite a further example, in 1930-32 the Jewish community of Baghdad was incited to oppose, openly and formally (but unsuccessfully) in petitions to the British government and the League of Nations, the change of status of Iraq from a mandate to a formally independent country. The expulsion of Jews from Iraq in the early fifties is now known, from reports released from Israeli archives, to have been carried out with the full cooperation of Israeli agents who were established in Baghdad at the time and who not only negotiated with the Iraqi government and with the real ruler of the country, Nuri Said, but actually boasted in a telegram sent to Tel Aviv that they were "cooking more quickly" the law expelling the Jews from Iraq. The "quick cooking" involved anti-Iraqi activities in the United States in which American Jews took a prominent part. It seems that the Israeli influence on Iraqi policies in the period before 1958 was quite deep and extensive, and was probably one of the reasons for the fall of the regime.
These are examples of activities which were not condemned within the Israeli establishment when they were published in recent years, despite the deep intervention in Lebanon. Many similar discussions about proposals from the same period made both by "doves" and "hawks" could be quoted to illustrate the thesis that the domination of the whole Middle East, either by a warlike conquest of parts of it or by alliances with regimes which necessarily become alienated because of such alliances, or by making those regimes dependent on an internal power structure over which Israel (or the Zionist movement) has a great influence, has been and remains the real Israeli aim. In pursuing this aim the Israeli establishment has shown both flexibility and tenacity in the methods employed, and also in being ready to make significant retreats when under compulsion.
There are two principal examples of such retreats: the retreat from Sinai from 1956-57, made because of the insistence of the two superpowers, and the retreat from most of the area of South Lebanon, made under the pressure of popular resistance. The lesson of 1956-57 has been absorbed by the Israeli establishment. All possible efforts have been made (and will be made) to prevent any cooperation between the United States and the USSR on Middle Eastern affairs, with great prospect of success in that direction. The lesson of guerrilla warfare based on popular support in Lebanon in 1983-85 has not been absorbed in Israel. In fact, the profound social change which has occurred in most Arab countries since the fifties is not understood. The inertia resulting from long continuity produces the effect that the only "model" of an Arab regime (or movement) which the Israeli establishment -- the "doves" particularly -- assumes and wants, are such as were only too prevalent from the twenties to the fifties, and whose most characteristic feature was dependency on outside powers combined with alienation at home. Sadat of the last few months of his life fit the model perfectly.
JUSTIFYING "PREVENTIVE" WARS
The invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent Israeli opposition to that war have created in some circles outside Israel a false picture of a change within the Israeli establishment which did not happen. Since I am describing here the mainstream of Israeli opinion, I will ignore the radical opposition to the war to concentrate on one aspect of the debate within the establishment. Sharon and his henchmen were accused, time and again, of deceiving the Israeli government and the public as to the extent and the firepower of the PLO armed forces and the Syrian units in Lebanon. Sharon claimed that they were huge and so had to be destroyed because the very existence of such a military force is a "reason" for an Israeli attack. His establishment opponents, who were factually correct, said that the PLO and Syrian armed forces in Lebanon were small. Both sides actually shared the same assumption, which dates from the early fifties, that the very existence of an Arab state with a military force, beyond certain debatable qualitative and quantitative bounds, is a "reason" for an Israeli preventive attack on it. Consideration of parity between Israel and the other state is out of the question.
It is extremely important to understand that this fixed policy is now propagated with full force as the reason" for the next Israeli preventive war. There has been a whole series of very serious predictions from the highest military sources (from October 1984) that war with Syria is "inevitable." On June 10, 1985, Tali Zelinger, the military correspondent of Davar, announced in the name of the "security apparatus" (the army together with the various intelligence systems) that "the evaluation today is that sooner or later a war between Syria and Israel will break out." Even more open was Ran Edelist, the military correspondent of Monitin, the most prestigious Hebrew monthly, in the August 1985 issue (which appears at the end of July). To explain better what he did and how the Israeli establishment can find ways to circumvent censorship in order to show to its members which way the wind is blowing, it is necessary to explain that subtitles of articles in the Hebrew press do not have to pass the censor but are added by the author or the editor at the last moment. Ran Edelist, who enjoys the best contacts with Israeli generals, interviewed first a colonel in the reserves, Haim Yaabetz, who has just retired from long and distinguished service in military intelligence which included in its last years strong support for the "strategic megalomania of Arik Sharon." He then added to the interview, which proceeded along the usual lines of the inevitability of war (not only with Syria, but as a permanent characteristic of Israeli existence in the Middle East) the following subtitle quite unconnected with the text:
Division commander in the North, D., ordered his officers to make known to all soldiers of this division that the war with Syria is very near, and I, a red-haired brigade commander, told all comrades: ‘This is what is going to be, this is what exists, so let us fall to work'.
The author then discusses in considerable detail "the price" in number of victims that Israel is going to pay for its future victory over Syria. I emphasize that such announcements, especially those made to officers by division or brigade commanders in Israel, are to be regarded very seriously, since it is by such means that the real decision makers in Israel (who are not the government, which is informed at the last moment) communicate their decisions to the most important part of the Israeli establishment. The real decisions to attack Egypt (in 1956) or to invade Lebanon (in 1982) were communicated in exactly the same way. In 1967 although Nasser's steps hastened the process, the officers knew that Israel was going to attack weeks before it happened, while the majority of the Israeli government fondly imagined that war could yet be averted.
Of even greater importance are the clear signs in the Hebrew press and other Israeli sources which predict an Israeli attack on Jordan. Again, if we will free our minds of cant and of the influence of Israeli official propaganda and take a hard look at Israeli actions through the years, we will see that the actual type of an Arab regime (monarchical or republican, "right" or "left") is of no importance to Israel. What is important is whether it is strong or weak militarily and otherwise, and whether it enjoys a measure of popularity with its subjects. A Middle Eastern Arab state which is developing military strength is going to be attacked for this very reason (when the conditions are favorable), and those interested in Middle Eastern politics should accept this high probability as a fact of life, until it is altered by a basic change within the Israeli Jewish society. Let me quote rather extensively from the Hebrew press, which, as usual, explains this in advance to its readers. Reuven Padahtzur, the correspondent of Haaretz on military affairs and one of the most serious and better informed writers on that subject in Israel, writes under the title "Who Wants a Preventive Blow?" (Haaretz, July 4, 1985):
Supplying the Jordanian army with advanced fighter planes and mobile land-air missiles might force Israel to react with a preventive blow in the case of a war breaking out in the region. The American-Jordanian arms deal must be considered not only from the relatively narrow viewpoint of direct military risks emanating from the supply of modern, sophisticated weapons to the Jordanian army. One of the interesting, dangerous and undesirable repercussions of this transaction is the almost total limitation of the variety of military options that the Israeli Defense Army will have. The introduction of advanced fighter planes and of mobile land-air missile batteries into Hussein's army might force Israel to react in advance with a preventive blow against this army, in every case of war breaking out in the region.
After giving in great detail the military equipment which Jordan has, or is going to purchase mainly from the United States but also from the USSR, and after highlighting the great danger to Israel from the "joint maneuvers by the Jordanian and American forces," since those exercises are an important contribution to the improvement of the offensive capacity of the Jordanian army, the author concludes:
Israel's security policy must have an answer also for the worst scenario. One of these scenarios, taking into account a situation when Israel has to face the outbreak of war on the eastern front, including the armies of Syria, Jordan, as well as Iraqi expeditionary contingents, forces the Israeli Defense Army to take immediate steps in order to neutralize the threat to sensitive targets inside Israel. For this purpose it seems that there will be no choice but to inflict a preconceived preventive blow on Jordan.
Thus, paradoxically, the supply of modern sophisticated weapons to the Jordanian army not only does not enhance the security of the Kingdom of Jordan, but even involves a great danger to its army (my emphasis).
The same theme was taken (among many others) by the famous Zeev Schiff, also in Haaretz (August 16, 1985) in an article entitled "Who Wants to Finish Off Hussein?" After pointing out that the old, well-known plan of Sharon for what he calls "a Palestinization of Jordan," (which means an Israeli conquest of Jordan and an establishment of a "Palestinian" regime there of the "Village League" variety) has also been supported for many years by some Israeli leaders of the Labor Party, he describes the ways in which a "case" for such a step will be built in Israeli public opinion (and a part of American opinion as well, one may add):
One does not begin with sudden (airforce) bombardments in the center of Amman. Also in Lebanon it did not begin with the invasion itself and the military advance on Beirut. Before this, "the case" should be built, the threat should be cultivated, until it becomes something insupportable as a threat to existence, in the eyes of (Israeli) public opinion (my emphasis).
He even hints at further very interesting possibilities: After pointing out that "the modern history of the Middle East is full of examples of removing a ruler by means of murder" and that King Hussein was a target for such attempts in the past, he sagely observes that in the past, "those who indulged in such machinations were always Arabs, but it should not be so in the future. Different scenarios are possible in such a situation. If someday the responsibility for the Israeli Intelligence and Security Services falls into the hands of a person without restraint, everything is possible" (my emphasis). As we say in Hebrew, a hint to the wise is enough, and here we have much more than a hint; we have a full scenario which is not dependent, except in timing and outward presentation, on Sharon becoming once more the power inside the Israeli government, but on the same basic reasons which have ruled Israeli (and before this the Zionist) policies for a long time. Incidentally, Schiff quickly adduces as the "reason" which worries Sharon and pushes him to advocate an Israeli "preventive" attack on Jordan, "that a part of the PLO is becoming more moderate." In this there is also nothing new; the careful observation of the cease-fire by the PLO between August 1981 and June 1982 was one of the reasons, freely admitted inside Israel, why Israel invaded Lebanon. This is part of a familiar pattern.
I will only briefly mention the "reasons" which are being given to the more gullible parts of public opinion, especially in the United States, for such scenarios: "The fight against terror," particularly world terror, is one of the most important of them, and of course protecting "Western civilization," as has been said countless times in the past. Here, too, nothing changes. Indeed the main point of this article is that the policies of the Zionist and Israeli establishment are, so far, constant, and therefore an unprejudiced analysis of the past can be a guide to the contingencies of the future.
This analysis can be confirmed by an examination of the official "reasons" put forth inside Israel for the present "missile conflict" with Syria. Briefly, Israel claims for itself the right to dictate where, on its own territory, Syria will or will not station weapons (even such defensive weapons as anti-aircraft missiles). It is important to perceive that all public opinion in Israel, except the opposition from the left to the present National Unity government (about 13 percent of the political strength as expressed by Knesset seats), is united on this point. The whole debate, as freely expressed in the Hebrew press (not in the Jerusalem Post, of course), is whether Israel should first take the diplomatic road and only afterward attack Syria, or attack without diplomacy at a time of its own convenience. The principle of domination -- that Israel can unilaterally dictate to an independent state about defensive weapons on its own territory -- is accepted by a great majority of the Israeli public, including, contrary to the myths propagated among both the Western and the Arab publics, the "Peace Now" movement. Nor is this the first demand of its kind. On the contrary, like the political demands discussed above, the demand that the Arabs disarm or limit their armaments goes back to 1918-20, and continues throughout Zionist history. To limit discussion only to the last few years: 1) the overflights of the Saudi bases like Tabuk, which reinforced the Israeli demand that Saudi planes or other equipment should not be based there, and 2) the demands to limit the sales of sophisticated defensive weapons to Jordan and countless others are of exactly the same kind and illustrate the same principle of domination of the whole Middle East which not only Israeli governments (and before them the Zionist leadership) but the great majority of the Israeli public support as a principle of such overwhelming importance that it justifies waging a war.
It is even more important to perceive that the United States now, like Britain and France before it, agrees in principle to those imperialistic Israeli policies and only tries to soften them in their practical application. American diplomats carried the Israelis' demands (which by any standard, whether that of international law or the principle of self-determination, were outrageous) to Syria in the winter of 1985-86, as they carried similar demands to Saudi Arabia before. The American government and an overwhelming part of public opinion, as expressed in the media, accept without discussion the "principle" that Israel can dictate through the United States to Arab states, but not of course the reverse. It is acceptable to the American Congress that a discussion of national dimensions should be held about whether AWACS planes in Saudi Arabia are a danger to Israel, but there is no record of any discussion in the Congress over whether any of the many types of offensive weapons delivered to Israel by the United States is a danger to any or all Arab states.
Of course, such "principles" are used, and have been used through the ages, in relations between the superpowers and weaker states. But the extraordinary and exceptional case of Zionism and Israel consists exactly in this: that Israel by itself does not have the strength to be a superpower dominating the Middle East, even through military conquest. It employs to a great extent the strength of others, relying on internal manipulation of the public opinion of the really strong powers. This fact, however obscured in the Western media and unclear (I think) to a great part of the pro-Western Arab establishments, is quite clear to the Arab peoples. The diplomats can be, perforce, satisfied with humiliating arrangements which achieve some small measure of practical success, i.e. the Israeli flights over Saudi territory cease after a time, or after a great dispute some old Hercules planes are delivered by the United States to Egypt. But the people, particularly the educated people, who are interested in politics and determine it in the long run, feel the humiliating principle involved and become -- indeed must become -- more and more alienated from their pro-American regimes and also more anti-American.
As I have tried to show, this has also been one of the constant aims of Zionist and Israeli policies. The effect of these popular pressures in Arab countries, whether expressed in demonstrations and protests or in individual acts of indiscriminate terror which have a measure of popular support, is the same. I am not discussing here acts which I condemn on moral grounds, but rather their social and political causes and effects. A vicious circle is created in which precisely those basic discriminatory anti-Arab principles of American policy are being reinforced, and they in turn reinforce the alienation of the Arab peoples from all pro-American regimes. No merely diplomatic solution of any kind, no "peace process" can break this vicious circle so long as the principles which the United States inherited from Britain and France and which are constant in Zionist and Israeli policies, remain unchanged and undiscussed. The present course of affairs will lead necessarily to either another "ordinary" war or to a much bigger conflict of catastrophic dimensions.
One relatively recent example of American policy in the Middle East can illustrate the basic principles involved and their perception by all the peoples of the Middle East (Jews as well as Arabs, only in a contrary sense). I refer to the affair of the American intervention in Sudan to help (by corruption, bribery and undue influence) the Falasha Ethiopian Jews to come to Israel, where many of them were settled in the West Bank despite some feeble official American protests, which were treated by Israel with justified contempt. The facts are clear enough, although widely disregarded by the American media: Sudan and Ethiopia are full of starving refugees numbering many millions. In the midst of this general human misery, an enormous American effort both in money and politics, involving the Vice President of the United States, was spent on helping a small group of people whose sole criterion was that they were recognized as being Jews by the Jewish State.
Politically, this effort was one of the main causes, perhaps the most important immediate cause, of the fall of the Numeiri regime. The trials, now continuing, of the highest Sudanese officials, followed by all Middle East people with great interest, reveal to all of them the fundamental principle of American (and of course Israeli) policy in the Middle East: racist discrimination. Human suffering by itself does not count; the most important, almost the only, criterion is to what group of people the human being belongs. If he belongs to the group considered superior (in a similar way to the superiority, assumed fifty years ago about the "Aryans") then all the effort of the United States will be spent on his behalf, even to the extent of harming the immediate pragmatic interests of the United States. But if he belongs to the millions of "inferior" people, to which all non-Jews of the Middle East belong according to accepted principles of American politics, then very little is owed to his human suffering and nothing to his human dignity. The word "fanaticism" is very often on American and Israeli lips where Arabs are concerned, but it should be recognized that the Zionist and Israeli principles of policy with regard to the Arab peoples of the Middle East are fanatical, both in their total disregard for reason and social facts, and in their application, which continuously defies most considerations of political interest or "Realpolitik." Without this necessary recognition of the blind fanaticism involved in the real Zionist and Israeli policies and in the acceptance and internationalization of this fanatical approach by the American establishment, no understanding of the actual course of politics in the Middle East is possible. With the acceptance of this as the main explanatory factor, the actual course of affairs can be understood, both the past and as far as possible the future as well.
APPENDIX: ON THE NECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE, WHICH IS ALSO POLITICAL POWER
Professor Edward Said, in his most important work, Orientalism, has pointed out how the mainstream of the Western "Orientalist" research served, consciously or unconsciously, the aim of domination of the Arab world by the Western powers. However, one should add to his analysis one important factor: Orientalism was indeed a powerful instrument of penetration and conquest because it contained useful facts, however maliciously arranged, and also because the Arab world was almost completely ignorant about the West. A corresponding situation exists now: Israel and "Israeli friends" in the West are well-informed about the Arab world, at least factually, even though that information is usually arranged in the interest of Israeli domination. On the other hand, an almost complete ignorance about Israel prevails, as can be deduced from the fact that a serious and comprehensive survey of the Hebrew press does not exist outside Israel, certainly not in the Arab world. (Incidentally, one can say that the ignorance of Palestinians, except those living in Israel, about Israeli affairs is as great as that of the other Arab peoples). Although, as has been implied above, this does not prevent these peoples from perceiving the basic truth and from acting accordingly after a period of time, it prevents the average Arab intellectual and also the small minority of Western people who do not accept anti-Arab fanaticism from analyzing the situation before it is too late. As Francis Bacon said, knowledge is power; this applies also to political knowledge. The accurate, factual and ideological knowledge of Zionism and of Israeli society and politics is the most important single condition for breaking the vicious circle of the attempted Zionist domination of the Middle East. This domination is ultimately doomed to failure, but in the absence of knowledge this failure will cost much more in blood and human suffering than otherwise.
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