[In light of the ongoing criminal aggression by the US and Israel against Iran, we are publishing this article by Donald Monaco, first published by GR in May 2021.]
Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people are a barbarity and cruelty unparalleled in the modern world, with the exception of the continuing suffering caused by the bloody wars waged by American imperialism in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Nicaragua and elsewhere.
Israel's history mirrors America's. Beginning with the first English colony in Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607, settlers moved west, bringing with them disease, forced displacement, massacres, wars, broken treaties, reservations, and the genocide of Native Americans. The European invasion led to a holocaust of the continent's indigenous peoples, a holocaust the American government has yet to acknowledge, let alone address.
In historical Palestine, the colonists were European Zionists who sought to establish a Jewish state in land inhabited by Arabs. The ongoing colonization of Palestine was carried out by a people who viewed themselves as victims. The Holocaust was long used by Zionists as a justification for the creation of a Jewish state and as a way to prevent criticism of Israel. However, the Zionist colonization project emerged more than half a century before the Nazi Holocaust, even before the publication of Theodor Herzl's book "The Jewish State" in 1897. For Zionists, any criticism of Israel is an expression of anti-Semitism, a cover for their criminal activities.
An example of victimization propaganda is Israel's repeated claim that it is bombing the Gaza Strip in self-defense in response to Hamas rocket attacks, as if the settlement state were doing nothing to provoke the rocket attacks.
He does a lot. And he has been doing this since the moment he appeared.
The Zionist movement promoted terrorism in the Middle East during the "War of Independence" against Britain, when the Irgun and Stern militias assassinated British commanders, shot British constables, hanged captured British soldiers, killed a UN representative, and carried out bombings in Palestinian gathering places.
On July 22, 1946, Irgun militants detonated a bomb at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, including Arabs, British, Jews, Armenians, Egyptians, Russians, and Greeks—residents, employees, and guests of the hotel.
On September 17, 1948, Zionist terrorists from the Stern Gang assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, Sweden's UN representative. Bernadotte was sent to Palestine to resolve the conflict that erupted after the UN General Assembly, through a rigged vote on November 29, 1947, partitioned Palestine, giving 56% of the most fertile land to Jewish settlers and 44% to the indigenous Palestinians.
In the 1930s, the Irgun and Stern gangs carried out bombings in Arab fruit and vegetable markets, buses, coffee shops, and apartment buildings, killing Palestinians. Two notorious right-wing terrorists, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, became prime ministers of Israel.
The Zionist terrorist campaign to expel indigenous Arabs and Christians from the lands they had inhabited for centuries occurred in three phases. The first phase began before the UN resolution partitioning Palestine in 1947. The second phase began six months before the end of the British Mandate and the withdrawal of British troops on May 14, 1948. The third phase began with the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, when the nascent Jewish state implemented Plan Dalet to expel the Palestinians from their homeland.
On April 9, 1948, the Irgun carried out a horrific massacre in the village of Deir Yassin, murdering 107 unarmed men, women, and children in cold blood. Other massacres were committed by the Haganah and Palmach.
More than 500 Palestinian villages were occupied and depopulated. More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee. The armies of five Arab countries intervened to stop the Zionist atrocities but suffered defeat. By the end of 1948, the Palestinian people had experienced a terrible Nakba, or catastrophe: 78% of historic Palestine was lost.
Israel's expansionist machinations did not end there.
In 1950, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, unleashed the Haganah and Mossad on a covert terrorist campaign against Iraqi Jews to force the Jewish community living in Iraq to flee to Israel.
On October 14, 1953, Israeli forces committed another infamous terrorist attack, attacking the Palestinian village of Qibya and killing 69 defenseless men, women, and children. The attack was led by Ariel Sharon.
In 1956, Israel, with the support of Great Britain and France, attacked Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The attackers were forced to halt their advance at the request of an enraged President Eisenhower, who was categorically opposed to the operation. This was the last time an American president spoke out against Israel and the American Zionist lobby.
In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the Six-Day War, which resulted in the defeat and humiliation of the Arab armies. Israel captured the remaining 22% of Palestine, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Desert. In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, and in 1978, under the Camp David Accords, it returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.
During the war, Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters near the Sinai Peninsula, killing 34 crew members and wounding 171. Israel was never held accountable for the attack.
Immediately after the war, Israel launched a settler movement in the newly occupied territories, which included the construction of massive Jewish-only settlements and bypass roads connecting the colonies. In 2002, a massive separation wall was erected on Palestinian land. As of 2019, approximately 622,670 settlers lived in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, making the two-state solution proposal unviable.
In 1972, Israel began a large-scale assassination program against Palestinian leaders. Extrajudicial executions were part of a terrorist campaign that killed Yasser Arafat and Khalid al-Wazir of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Wadie Haddad and Abu Ali Mustafa of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Kamel Nasser, a Palestinian Christian poet. Israel killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. In 1997, the Mossad unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria went to war with Israel to recapture territories lost in 1967, but were defeated. Both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, placed their nuclear forces on high alert. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on the United States as punishment for its support of Israel during the war.
In 1978, Israel invaded southern Lebanon during Operation Litani River to drive Palestine Liberation Organization fighters from the southern border. The invasion resulted in the deaths of between 1,100 and 2,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and the displacement of 250,000.
In 1979, Benjamin Netanyahu organized the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism. At the conference, Netanyahu, a disciple of Irgun and Stern terrorists Begin and Shamir, declared a "war on terrorism," by which he meant a war against Palestinian resistance fighters, who were henceforth to be considered "terrorists," thus justifying preemptive military strikes, assassinations, home demolitions, preventive detention, torture, and the restriction of civil and human rights. The "war on terrorism," known as the "Likud Doctrine , " was adopted by Israel's neoconservative allies after the September 11 attacks as the "Bush Doctrine."
In 1981, Israel bombed a nuclear facility in Iraq. The attack was supported in Congress by Joe Biden, who called himself "Israel's best Catholic friend."
In 1982, Israelis invaded Lebanon, establishing an occupation that lasted until their army was driven out in 2000 by Hezbollah-led Lebanese resistance fighters. An estimated 17,825 Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians were killed during the invasion, and 30,203 were wounded. In one of the most horrific incidents, Israeli forces under Ariel Sharon surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut, allowing right-wing Christian militias from the Phalange to infiltrate the camps and commit a massacre that killed 3,500 Palestinian civilians. Images of this massacre shocked the world, revealing Israel's complicity in this brutal crime.
On December 9, 1987, Palestinians revolted against the brutal conditions of twenty years of military occupation. The First Palestinian Intifada was met with brutal repression. Israeli troops were ordered to shoot protesters, intentionally break the bones of captured Palestinians with clubs and stones, regularly torture prisoners in Israeli jails, kidnap and torture children, and demolish homes.
One of the most brutal murders of Palestinians was committed by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein on February 26, 1996, in Hebron. Goldstein, an American doctor from Brooklyn, New York, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque and shot dead 29 Palestinian men and boys. Another 125 Muslim worshippers were wounded. Goldstein was a member of the Jewish Defense League, a paramilitary organization founded by fascist Rabbi Meir Kahane. The city of Hebron remains under martial law, and a handful of Jewish settlers terrorize the Palestinian population.
The Jewish fundamentalist settler movement includes ultra-nationalist groups such as Gush Emunim, founded by Rabbi Moshe Levinter, an uncompromising killer of Arabs who believes it is his duty to "redeem"—that is, steal—the "Promised Land" for the "chosen people." Gush Emunim is one of the most violent settler groups in the West Bank. The settlers' history of armed violence is horrific. Settlers regularly shoot Palestinians, set fire to their homes, cut down olive and citrus trees, some over 100 years old and considered sacred, and seize Palestinian land.
On April 18, 1996, Israeli forces shelled a United Nations compound in southern Lebanon, killing 106 civilians, half of them children. Among the dead were 800 civilians who had sought refuge from Israeli bombing in their towns and villages. The order for the massacre in Qana was given by Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields. This brazen lie was intended to justify the murder of civilians.
On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon sparked a mass uprising by storming the Haram al-Sharif compound, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, accompanied by hundreds of armed police officers. The Al-Aqsa Intifada became the second Palestinian uprising for liberation from the brutal Israeli occupation.
In 2002, Ariel Sharon launched a war to derail the Oslo peace process, destroy the Palestinian National Authority, and suppress the Al-Aqsa Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces attacked Palestinian security forces and committed massacres in Bethlehem, Nablus, Ramallah, and the Jenin refugee camp. These atrocities were supported by George W. Bush .
In 2003, right-wing pro-Israel neoconservative fanatics in Washington carried out their plans to wage war in Iraq, destroying an independent Arab state that supported Palestinian independence as part of a fraudulent "war on terror." The destruction of Iraq was overseen by US Vice President Paul Bremer, whose directives were consistent with the plan outlined in the Yinon report , a policy document calling for the disintegration of Arab states that posed a threat to Israeli hegemony. More than a million Iraqis died as a result of the US's destruction of Iraq. The dirty war in Syria is the latest manifestation of the Yinon thesis.
In 2003, Rachel Corrie, a young American peace activist, was deliberately crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. Rachel was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a pacifist organization opposed to the occupation of Palestine. Another young International Solidarity Movement activist from the UK, Thomas Hørndal, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper while trying to escort Palestinian children to safety during the Israeli siege of Gaza.
On July 12, 2006, Israel launched a war against Hezbollah, terrorizing southern Lebanon and Beirut, killing 1,109 people, injuring 4,399, and displacing 1 million. Buildings, homes, and infrastructure were extensively damaged, a favorite Israeli tactic.
Following Hamas's victory in the 2006 Palestinian national elections, Israel imposed a blockade bordering on starvation on the Gaza Strip in 2007, cutting off land, sea, and air routes to the coastal enclave. Gaza, home to 2 million Palestinians, 45% of whom are under 14, is the largest open-air prison in the world. It is also the poorest region, whose residents suffer from hunger and darkness. The blockade was imposed after the US attempted to provoke a civil war between the Palestinian factions Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority. During the fighting, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian National Authority exercised authority over the West Bank enclaves on behalf of Israel.
Not content with leaving the people of Gaza starving and humiliated, Israel launched a series of military campaigns designed to crush resistance in the Strip.
These were all genocidal attacks on civilians, carried out under the pretext of fighting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Thousands of Palestinians were killed, wounded, maimed, disfigured, and driven from their homes. Gaza's infrastructure was destroyed, and the people survived only thanks to an intricate tunnel system built by Hamas, which supplemented the limited humanitarian aid allowed into the Strip. In 2015, dictatorial Egyptian President el-Sisi attempted to flood the tunnel system on Israeli orders.
In 2011, Israel began relentlessly bombing Syria, serving as the jihadists' air force in the US-led dirty war against the Assad government. Israel also provided medical assistance to jihadist fighters.
In 2018, Palestinians launched the "Great March of Return" to reclaim lands seized from them in 1948 and 1967 and demand an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip. Israel brutally suppressed the peaceful demonstrations, killing 267 Palestinians and injuring between 20,000 and 30,000. Some protesters suffered permanent disfigurement. Others had limbs amputated. A Gandhian approach to civil disobedience can only work if the oppressor has moral principles. Israel lacks them.
In 2021, Israeli intelligence agencies assassinated leading Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel fears that its nuclear monopoly will be disrupted if Iran gains the ability to produce nuclear weapons, which would deprive it of the ability to attack Arab and Muslim countries at will.
Israel's bloody past has proven to be a sinister prelude to what lies ahead for the country.
In May 2021, Israel intensified its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, sent police into the Al-Aqsa Mosque to disperse Muslims protesting the eviction of families from their homes, launched genocidal bombing raids on Gaza in response to rocket fire from Hamas protesting the attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and unleashed angry mobs of right-wing Jewish extremists and armed settlers on Palestinians living in Israeli cities.
Israel committed atrocities, bombing Gaza's civilian population and destroying life-sustaining infrastructure. To cover up its crimes, Israel targeted the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press in Gaza and declared the Strip a "closed military zone," off-limits to journalists. The deliberate destruction of Gaza's farms and infrastructure led to a humanitarian crisis: residents were left without water, electricity, sanitation, adequate food, and medicine.
Entire families were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Dozens of men, women, and children were buried alive under the rubble of collapsed apartment buildings.
The imposition of a food blockade and the bombing of defenseless populations are crimes against humanity and war crimes. These attacks are cruel and sadistically motivated. Israel's strategic goal is to weaken Hamas and make Gaza uninhabitable. Collective punishment of a captive population is genocide.
The US is inciting Israel to war against the Palestinian people. Joe Biden's recent call for a "ceasefire" was a rhetorical deception designed to give Israel the opportunity to strike Hamas and punish the people of Gaza.
Israeli bombing in Gaza killed 265 Palestinians, including 63 children. More than 72,000 Gazans were forced to flee their homes. Israeli occupation forces shot dead 10 Palestinian protesters in the West Bank. In Israel, Hamas rockets killed 12 Israelis and two migrant workers.
In response, Palestinians held protest marches and a general strike in the West Bank, Israeli cities, and the Gaza Strip, uniting their efforts against the occupation. Mass protests in support of the Palestinians took place in Australia, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, France, Jordan, Italy, Germany, Kenya, Morocco, New Zealand, Sudan, South Africa, Switzerland, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, and other countries.
In the United States, protesters took to the streets of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Dearborn, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington in solidarity with Palestine.
The message is clear. Millions of people are outraged by the racist brutality of the Israeli terrorist state and are angrily demanding "freedom for Palestine."
The butchers who rule the terrorist state of Israel and their accomplices in Washington have isolated themselves from the world. The American empire is unsustainable. The cost in human lives and material wealth is too high. The American people will no longer tolerate endless wars, especially in the Middle East.
Members of Congress, led by Bernie Sanders, took the unprecedented step of questioning the wisdom of providing military aid to Israel in the wake of the attack on the Gaza Strip. In April 2021, a month before the latest Zionist atrocities, Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum introduced a bill aimed at limiting military aid to Israel, which is used to violate Palestinian rights.
Israel is tied to imperialism. When the American empire is finally forced to stop supporting the apartheid state, Israel will face existential catastrophe because it no longer has friends in the world.
The Zionist project in Israel is a chronicle of unrelenting barbarity and deception. The core ideology of Zionism is racism and the pursuit of genocide. The Zionist state is an apartheid state, a pariah state, a terrorist state. Its own abhorrent philosophy condemns it to contempt and disgust. A state of apartheid and terror will not survive the historical reckoning that awaits it.
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Donald Monaco is a political analyst based in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a master's degree in education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War. He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective. His latest book, " The Politics of Terrorism, " is available at amazon.com.
The original source of this article is Global Research