THREE OPTIONS FOR ISRAEL

10 July, 2011

Three Options for Israel

Hameed Abdul Karim

A Russia Today report said there was a surge in anti-Israel sentiment in Europe and that Europeans were demanding that their governments stop turning a blind eye to Israel’s violation of human rights and international law.  This change of attitude is a reflection of the failure of traditional ‘main stream media’ in the face of challenges of social media sites as well as new channels that have appeared on the international scene. Israel’s monopoly of the world media is a thing of the past and nobody elucidated this reality more than Hilary Clinton who confessed ‘we are losing the media war and Al-Jazeera, Russia Today and China’s CCTV is winning. You could include Iran’s Press TV into the equation. The operative words in Clinton’s despair should be ‘media war’ and ‘losing’. 

It is a well known fact that it’s via the US and British media like CNN, Fox News, BBC and SKY News that Israel projects its image as the ‘good guy’ in the Middle East. In short all news coverage, especially on the Israeli – Palestine conflict, has to pass through an Israeli centric filter. Besides, we have former CIA director William Colby confessing the ‘Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) owns everyone of any significance in the (US) main stream media’.   But the days of the one sided narratives are over and Israel is seen ever more increasingly as a pariah state.   

So what does Israel do in the face of this reality?

Complete Ethnic Cleansing

The first option for Israel is to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine it started under its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion in 1948. Israel could provoke a situation in Gaza like it did in 2008 and force the remaining Palestinians to flee to Egypt. On the West Bank it could do the same and compel the Palestinians there to flee to Jordan. All the ‘Jewish’ state has to do is to harp on the US’s ‘war on terror’ as a bogey to accomplish its plan for a mono-ethnic state so dramatically described by Ilan Pappe in his book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’.  Ben Gurion, according to his ‘Plan Dalet’ had intended to starve the Palestinians to death after they come under ‘our mercy’. He had stressed there was no need to ‘distinguish anymore between the innocent and guilty and that ‘every attack (on the unarmed Palestinians) has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion’. Will Israel have the audacity to finish the job some sixty years later?

Samson Option

In his book ‘The Samson Option’ Seymour Hersh, the reputed American investigative journalist, gives a comprehensive account of how Israel acquired nuclear bombs with the aid of the French at its now not so secretive Dimona plant in the Negev desert. Israel now has over 200 nuclear bombs and many thermobaric bombs at its disposal to wipe out its ‘enemies’ if it believes there is a threat to its existence. The phrase ‘Samson Option’ came about from the mythical story of Samson destroying his ‘enemies’ and himself by bringing down a building on him and his enemies  so graphically depicted in the movie ‘Samson and Delilah’. Samson was a man of super natural strength and legend has it that he destroyed an entire army of a thousand of his enemies with only a jaw bone of a donkey.

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The South African Option

Nobody in his wildest dreams would have imagined that South Africa’s White apartheid regime could be dismantled, backed as it was by Israel and the leaders of the Western powers with perhaps only Britain showing some kind of opposition. But it happened.  Thanks to the courageous pro people leaders like Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Nelson Mandela had said that South Africa could never feel free as long as Palestine was under Israeli occupation. Desmond Tutu himself a vociferous and ardent supporter of Palestine’s independence has gone on record saying Israel’s apartheid policies in the form of Zionism were, in some aspects, worse than the one practiced by South Africa’s whites. 

Can the South African experience be duplicated in Palestine? Many peace activists, which include Israeli and non Israeli Jews, believe it is possible. They believe that if pressure is brought upon on Israel by the world community by way of boycotts and trade sanctions  similar to the ones imposed on south Africa, then there is no way Israel can sustain the apartheid policies it practices in the form of Zionism. 

Israel must cease to be a ‘Jewish’ state and transform itself into a modern democratic state where all its citizens can live in peace and harmony like they did before the advent of European Jews in Palestine. After all that’s what the West is clamouring for in Libya and Syria.  

Lakbimanews – Sunday 10 July, 2011