Christopher King suggests that American support for Israel and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may stem from a desire for Israelis “to stay where they are” because Washington does not want millions of extremist, racist Jews migrating to the USA in the event of a one-state solution and the return of dispossessed Palestinians to Palestine.
You will be aware that the entity calling itself the “state of Israel” was founded on Palestinian land by terrorism, has been murdering Palestinians while stealing their land, water, houses and orchards for over 60 years, yet claiming that its own citizens are victims of Palestinian terrorism when Palestinians resist.
Diaspora Jewish support for Israel
Recently, at the same time as Israel began killing the besieged citizens of Gaza in their concentration-camp conditions, imprisoned without food, fuel or electricity, subjected to air strikes, tank, artillery and sniper fire, white phosphorous munitions and experimental weapons, a rally was called in Israel’s support by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Its sponsors included:
Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth,
Henry Grunwald QC, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Alfred Magnus, President of the Board of Elders of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews Congregation
Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield, Head of the Movement for Reform Judaism
Jeremy Kelly & Bill Benjamin, Co-Chairmen, Assembly of Masorti Synagogues
Simon Hochhauser, President of the United Synagogue
These gentlemen are the leaders of Britain’s Jewish community. In view of their support of Israel’s murderous behaviour it is legitimate to ask exactly who the Jews are. What is their world-view and what can we predict of them? To what extent do Jews and those with immediate Jewish ancestry who are at the heart of our government influence the UK in supporting Israel both politically as in United Nations votes and in actions contrary to international law such as the Iraq invasion? David Milliband, our current foreign minister, Jack Straw, our foreign minister who made the case for war to the United Nations, Lord Levy, Anthony Blair’s paymaster as well as other Jewish members of Parliament come to mind. Saddam Hussein, whom the US armed in its proxy war against Iran, had become we will recall, Israel’s worst enemy.
Jewish influence behind invasion of Iraq
It is a fact that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal Jewish lobby group in the United States, enjoys great influence and used this in pressing the US government to invade Iraq. Two AIPAC lobbyists, Richard Perle and David Frum, were given BBC television time to assert that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and it was a British duty to defend democracy by joining the invasion. How did this come about? In the US, the Jewish community is now attempting to distance itself from support of the Iraq war by claiming that its lobbyists were out of touch with mainstream Jewish opinion. Mr J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish paperThe Forward, claims that Israel and US Jews didn’t want war with Iraq. Well, that is news we didn’t hear at the time. So the Israelis have been victimized again, this time by President Bush despite massive political, military and economic aid.
AIPAC is close enough to Israel to spy for it against the US, but if Mr Goldberg’s assertions are true, it didn’t get the message. Nor did Lord Levy who was in and out of Tel Aviv about once a week, or our Jewish MPs such as Gerald Kaufman. I used to admire Mr Kaufman as one of our best MPs: intelligent, liberal, honest, amusing and always worth listening to. I was therefore very interested to see how he would vote on the Iraq war. In the event, he “reluctantly” voted for war. Perhaps his reluctance enables him to consider that his share of the million Iraqis, that he had a hand in voting to death, are not quite as dead as those of, say, Richard Ottaway, my MP, whose pro-Israel stance seems to be the only quality to commend him to his place on our Intelligence and Security Committee. Although a Friend of Israel, Mr Kaufman has been very critical of that entity, but there are no reports of even one of those Iraqis returning to life because of it!
The “Samson option”
Mr Kaufman illustrates perfectly the complex ethical situation in which Israel’s establishment has placed Jews. I really mention him out of interest in a comment he made during one if his visits to Israel, which was televised as “The End of the Affair”. In it, he spoke of Israel’s “Samson option”. This refers to the incident described in the Torah (Judges 16:23 – 30) in which the blinded Israelite strongman, Samson, commits suicide by the act of destroying his enemies.
The Samson option means that if Israel faces dissolution by any means, it might use its nuclear weapons to destroy its enemies even if that should mean its own destruction. Who are Israel’s enemies? In that event, they would be not only active enemies, but everyone who failed to come to its aid. This was made explicit by Martin van Creveld, Professor of Military History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who is quoted as saying: “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’... We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.” If correctly quoted, Dayan’s simile was wrong. Mad dogs are not tolerated. They are shot. These are extraordinary suggestions.
The remarks by Messrs Kaufman and van Creveld indicate clearly that the possibility of lashing out at the entire world that is perceived by the Israelis to be their enemy, is actually being discussed. Is this credible, however? Yes, it is. The actions of the ageing, blinded, imprisoned and tormented Samson can be understood. Life is not worth living for him. So, what could make life not worth living for Israelis at the present time?
The Masada option
There is another incident in Jewish history that is more relevant to the Jewish world-view than Sampson. This is the mass suicide at Masada. Masada was a Jewish fortress in which 960 Jews -- men, women and children -- were besieged by the Romans in AD 73 following the failure of the Zealot rebellion and destruction of Jerusalem with its temple. Rather than surrender to the Romans, the men killed their women and children, following which they submitted to being killed by their fellows. This mentality is alien to our thinking; however the state of Israel considers the Masada mass suicide to have been a heroic act and its participants to be national martyrs. In viewing it positively and still believing in the same Torah-based world-view, Israelis today have the potential to respond in the same manner. If not, why is this possibility currently being discussed in Jewish/Israeli circles?
The trigger in the case of Masada was not at all the certainty of being captured by the Romans. If the Jews had surrendered, most would probably have lived; certainly their women and children would have. But their world-view had shattered. Jerusalem and the temple itself had been destroyed and God had permitted it. To use the language of the Torah, God had abandoned them.
Similarly, Israelis will perceive at some point that God has abandoned them -- for they are unlikely to recognize that they have abandoned Him. Are Israel’s hundreds of nuclear weapons, and the contemplation of using them indiscriminately, compatible with the mission, central to the Jews, to bless humanity by producing the Messiah? Is the murder of the Palestinians over the last 60 years and the most recent military massacre of Gaza’s citizens by means that are illegal even by the standards of warfare compatible with this aim? What of the siege and privations that Israel is inflicting on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza in an attempt to depopulate that territory? Is this how the Messiah will come?
You might wonder whether God matters at all to Israel and the Jews. The Jewish genius Freud or his followers would have no difficulty in demonstrating that the Jewish subconscious is based on the world-view that the Jews are God’s “chosen people”, irrespective of whether that is a conscious belief. That world-view is therefore susceptible to catastrophic collapse if God should abandon the Jews. At the risk of sounding like a prophet from the Torah, I must say that this is surely now the case. The concept of “righteousness”, critical to the Torah, has ceased to exist in Israel, in the hearts of Jewish religious leaders as well as in its supporters.
The fall of Israel is now as inevitable as that of Jerusalem and Masada were, once the Romans lost patience with the Jews. The world cannot tolerate a state based on racial and religious exclusivity, that has long a record of appalling terrorism and threatens all other countries with nuclear weapons if it cannot get its way. When Israelis realize this, they will know with the certainty of the besieged Jews of Masada that their God has abandoned them. They will then be extremely dangerous.
US support for Israel
Now, there is a puzzle here. Since the facts of Israel’s behaviour are known to the intelligence services and political class in the United States, why does the US support Israel politically, with vast sums of money and with weapons? We are aware of a tangle of obvious motivations, including bribery and money in various forms, fear of victimization and attack by the Jewish lobby, the uncertain grasp on reality of the Christian fundamentalists and simple-minded credulity. Let’s think about it. If support for Israel is in fact built on these foundations, it is very unstable. With this in mind, I wish to consider, a scenario in which Israel is forced by some means to accept the one-state solution with the right of return for the Palestinians. This might be through a United Nations resolution and/or lack of US support. In that case, there would be massive dislocation of both personal expectations and physical allocation of land and property in Israel. What would be the implications of this?
Perhaps 50 per cent of Israel’s 5.5 million Jews, accustomed to hate Palestinians, might seek to leave Israel. These would be the most extreme militant and religious sectors of the population who for whatever reason refuse to live with the Palestinians. Their destination country of choice would be the United States. This, therefore, might well be the reason why at its highest policy levels the US is committed to the success of the two-state solution and the success of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, against all accepted legal and humanitarian principles. Conceivably, it has nothing to do with AIPAC’s influence, Zionist money and Christian fundamentalism. Israel might not have the influence it imagines with the United States. It is entirely possible that the US supports Israel because it wants the Israelis to stay where they are. It does not want an influx of 2.5 million extremist Jews. Nor would any other country.
Israel cannot go on indefinitely as it has for the past 60 years, murdering the Palestinians and stealing their land and resources. Moreover, it is possible that Israel will, indeed, be seen as a mad dog. This and the suggestion of the Samson/Masada syndrome are not mine. Military solutions are always a bad idea. Their effects are entirely negative. Moreover, political realities can change overnight -- witness the fall of apartheid in South Africa and the collapse of the Soviet Union. A tragedy of their own making is forming both for Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora.
The way forward for Israel and the Jews is surely to consider the positive philosophy, if not the theology, of the Jew Jesus in contemplating positive acceptance of the single state solution. That is not an insuperable reorientation. The concept of the discriminatory, racist, religious, Jewish state is non-viable. It is an anachronism dangerous to the Jews and everyone else. By contrast, a truly democratic and egalitarian Jewish/Palestinian state would have every prospect of success, prosperity and making a positive contribution to the world.
Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.
