- (october 2011)
How to start another intifada.
This is odd to say the least. By trading 1000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hurt Palestinian president Abbas, who recognizes the right of Israel to exist, and enormously boosted the popularity of Hamas, the movement that does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. This would sound senseless if Abbas had not just applied for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. This is Netanyahu's way to stab Abbas in the back.
It is more than just an effort to undermine Abbas within the Palestinian territories: it is a deliberate plan to trigger a new wave of terrorist attacks that will kill israeli civilians but will deliver a political victory to Netanyahu. Just like Sharon before him, Netanyahu needs an enemy in order to survive politically: Hamas and the Israeli right-wing need each other. If one disappears, the other one will become useless. The atrocities of one side justify the existence of the other side. When Israel's fascist governments kill thousands of innocents in Lebanon and Gaza, they help Hezbollah and Hamas win popular support. When Hamas and Hezbollah kill Israeli civilians, they help Israel's fascists win elections. This logic has been perpetuated since the assassination of Rabin.
Netanyahu is probably hoping that many of the 1000 Palestinian prisoners returned to Hamas will go straight back to terrorism and inflict heavy casualties on Israeli civilians. Then Netanyahu will tell the world that Palestine does not deserve recognition as an independent state and will tell his own electorate that Israel needs a strong man to face the terrorists.
Israel has never been so weak since its founding. The world has changed dramatically: the logic of the Cold War (that favored Israel as the only reliable ally of the USA in the Middle East) has collapsed with the demise of the Soviet Union, the logic of ideology (that favored Israel as the only democratic country in the Middle East) has collapsed with the Arab Spring, and the logic of solidarity (that favored Israel as the first front against Islamic terrorism) has collapsed with the vastly reduced power of Al Qaeda.
Israel was faring much better, both on the international stage and with respect to the USA, when the Soviet Union existed, the Arab countries were ruled by mad dictators and Islamic extremists were staging spectacular acts of terror. Israel cannot undo the end of the Cold War or the Arab Spring, but can easily reignite Islamic terrorism by releasing hundreds of fighters and then architecting some kind of provocation. Expect the provocation to be Netanyahu's next move in this cynical game of chess.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (september 2011)
Isolating Israel.
The USA and Israel were the only countries that did not join in the rousing
applause at the end of Palestinian president Abbas' speech requesting
recognition at the United Nations for the Palestinian state.
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu
gave a pathetique speech in which he simply
reiterated the less and less credible narrative of why Israel is entitled
to a state (and thousands of other people are not) and offering the same
old paradigm of "direct negotiations" (presumably brokered by the USA)
to basically forestall any progress on the issue of Palestine.
Netanyahu's speech, in fact, convinced the Palestinians, the Arab world and
the world at large that Israel will never truly negotiate peace. It sounded
like the speech of a very old man who is still stuck in a world that does
not exist anymore. He talked about his neighbors as if they were still
the old crazy dictators a` la Saddam Hussein, when in fact five of them
(Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) have been replaced by democracies.
He blamed everybody else for Israel's diplomatic problems, when in fact
it was Israel to kill Turkish citizens who were bringing humanitarian aid to
Gaza, not viceversa; it was Israel's invasion of Lebanon to boost Hezbollah
that now rules Lebanon; it is Israel's continued expansion of the Jewish
settlement on Palestinian land that creates tension with an Arab world that
would love an end to this conflict. At one point Netanyahu invoked the right
of Israel to exist based on the fact that Jews lived there centuries ago,
a principle that has been obsolete for decades (if i found out that my
ancestors lived in Israel before the Jews, would i be entitled to my own state
where Israel is?) Israel got its right to exist because it has nurtured
some of the greatest scientists, artists and writers in history (probably more
than any other country as a percentage of the population). Israel got respect
and admiration because it created a democratic state and a free economy
at a time when these were rarities in the world. There are many reasons why
the world accepted and welcomed the state of Israel, but certainly not a
racist argument based on some religious books.
Netanyahu lives in an age that doesn't exist anymore. It is debatable
whether he is too dumb
to realize that times have changed or he is so smart that he prefers to live
in a past that was more favorable to Israel. But it is a fact that his
attitude precludes any settlement with the Palestinians: de facto, he does
not accept the Palestinians, the Arabs and, truth be told, the entire planet.
Netanyahu keeps repeating the same old propaganda. He has learned from the
Arabs: in the old days it was the Arabs who repeated a lie for a thousand
times hoping that this would turn it into a truth; now it's Israel that
does so. Repeating forever that Israel is a model of democracy and tolerance,
surrounded by a bunch of prehistoric tribes, does not turn it into a truth.
Abbas did the right thing.
Israel exerts too much power on the Congress of the USA,
thanks to 4.3 million Jews who live in the USA and who represent an important
electorate for anyone running for president (until a few years ago, there were
more Jews in the USA than in Israel itself).
On the other hand, the opinion of the president of the USA has very little
influence on how Israelis vote in national elections.
The USA therefore will never truly
pressure Israel into compromising. Israel is happy with the status quo; and
the USA, as its main economic partner and military supporter, is the only
country that could pressure it into a compromise; except that the prime
minister of Israel seems to have more power over the president of the USA
than the president of the USA over Israel's prime minister.
Abbas has reached the obvious conclusion that Palestine will get its state only
if it creates an international movement to isolate Israel.
On one hand the Arab spring and the Turkish boom has made the neighbors of
Israel much more likeable to everybody. On the other hand Israel's arrogant
and frequently genocidal military adventures has made Israel much less likeable
to everybody.
Obama missed a chance to side immediately and forcefully with the freedom
fighters in Egypt and Libya. He may be making another strategy mistake when
siding with Netanyahu because Netanyahu's government is much weaker than it
looks like from America. Netanyahu's partner is a vicious
foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who would have done well in Hitler's
regime; and the people of Israel have marched in the street to protest the
economic situation in a manner that owes to the Arab Spring. Obama is
supporting a man who might not have a future.
Good thinking, president Abbas. And shame on you, president Obama, who did not
stand with the freedom fighters of Egypt and Libya the same enthusiastic
way that France and Britain did, and now represent the only country in the world
that did not give Abbas a standing ovation.
Yes: i removed Israel from the
list of countries of the world. That's how we can put pressure on Israel: we
ought to threaten its very right to exist (something that we have always given
them for free) until a Palestinian state also comes to be. Until then the
international community should revoke the right of Israel to exist, so that
Israel can remember again out it feels to be a people without a state.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (august 2011)
The loser in the Arab Spring is Israel.
Until a year ago Israel pretended to be surrounded by vicious enemies (that
was its excuse for obtaining support from the USA and Europe) while in
reality it enjoyed the friendship of Egypt's dictator Mubarak,
a de-facto military alliance with Turkey, the passive tolerance of
the Western-educated king of Jordan and the pointless hostility of
Syria's dictator Assad (who was never able to get a single millimeter of land
back and whose troops never hurt a single Israeli soldier). Israel's biggest
problems came from the two local democracies: Lebanon and Palestine.
Palestinians voted Hamas in power, which ended up controlling only the Gaza
strip because the Western powers managed to keep a friendly government in power
in the rest of Palestine (in the West Bank). The Lebanese voted Hezbollah in
power, the very movement that Israel had tried to destroy with a failed
invasion a few years back. Both Hamas and Hezbollah want the destruction of
Israel (like most of the Arab world, incidentally).
Now Egypt is moving towards democracy, Turkey has been angered by just about
every Isreali move, and Syria is shaken by a popular revolution. The very
nature of the Arab Spring is making Israel more irrelevant and a little
anachronistic: here is a tiny enclave of religious racism that calls itself
a democracy and bombs everybody at will while romantic revolutions depose
dictators and install modern democracies around it. It used to look like
Israel was surrounded by medieval kingdoms, but it may soon look like a group
of modern countries are annoyed by a tiny remnant of the Crusades.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (january 2011)
Israel reaps what it sow.
Israel kept building in the occupied territories and humiliated Palestinians
who wanted to start peace negotiations.
In 2006 Israel invaded Lebanon killing scores of civilians.
Now history is getting back at Israel: Hamas is revered by most Palestinians
as the only true resistance movement, and Hezbollah has become the arbiter
of politics in Lebanon and will probably dominate the new coalition.
Israel keeps spinning the fairy tale that both are
terrorist groups and that their power is illegitimate. Only the most ignorant
redneck of the USA can believe those stories anymore. Both Hamas and Hezbollah
won the majority of votes in democratic elections. There is nothing
dictatorial about their rise to power. There is just popular anger.
As riots engulf Egypt and may lead to the eventual downfall of the hated
Mubarak regime, Israel is beginning to realize the sad and perhaps apocalyptic
truth: any transition from dictatorship to democracy in the region will
bring to power politicians who represent ordinary people, and ordinary people
(unlike the crooks who have enslaved them for decades) harbor strong
anti-Israeli feelings. Any progress in democracy will automatically result
in more hostility towards Israel. This is what Israel's brutal human-rights
violations and massacres have achieved. Israel can make deals with corrupt
dictators, but not with the masses.
By prioritizing its own safety over the human rights of hundreds of millions
of neighbors, Israel has isolated itself more than any war did.
Israel has created its own enemies. It will have to live in a much more hostile
neighborhood for a long, long time.
The Israelis obviously don't study their own history in school, otherwise they
would know what happened to their state two thousand years ago in similar
circumstances.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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