Luc Brunet – 26 November 2023
This article on the Palestinian conflict tries to forget about emotions from both sides of the conflict, and focuses on positioning it historically, and within the changes that we see happening in global geopolitics.
Even if I mention the word “history” in this introduction, I shall not go into details of the history of the region. Its history is very long, complicated and there is plenty of material about it, although only a limited amount of such material can be considered as really independent and unbiased.
But let’s start with some comments on the wording used by the mainstream media to manipulate and influence the population.
The power of words
One of the mostly used words in the news after the 7th October attack by Hamas was: islamism and terrorists. The two words have a strong impact on the western public, although the meaning of the words are far from clear and are often manipulated.
In general we use the word Islamism to characterize people claiming their desire to apply all religious rules of Islam.
To put it in perspective, almost all Muslim countries after WW2 started a rapid evolution towards a secular type of society. Countries of the Middle-East, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan were evolving that way, especially in metropolitan areas. Palestine before 1948 was no exception. The country side in all those countries was of course still very conservative, but I am sure that the continuation of the secular trend would have reached those parts of the population too, together with a better living standard and more opening to the rest of the world. The Arabic peninsula was alone to be more conservative and its small population (all this was before the petro-dollar economic boom) sticked further to the Bedouin lifestyle.
But something happened stopping that process, that indeed was similar to the evolution of European societies in the 19th century. I discussed this in more details in an article published ten years ago:
I can summarized it here in a few words: the modernity of the Muslim world was promoted and engineered by secular leaders hostile to the US type capitalism and, although being mostly opposed to the communist soviet model, felt more comfortable cooperating with Moscow or Peking that with Washington or London. The western world wanted to stop such evolution by all means and found a partner against those secular leaders: islamist groups like for example the Muslim Brotherhood. The west and the islamists both disliked the secular governments, but for very different reasons – the west wanted to stop secular leaders getting closer to the socialist world, and the islamists wanted to stop them liberating the populations from the Sharia law, instead planning to bring their countries back to the middle-ages.
The west and the islamists united in that fight with great success, with creations like Al Qaida, the Talibans, ISIS, Daesh and many more, including Hamas. Of course the successful cooperation was an illusion, as islamists indeed hate western powers even more than they hated secular Muslim powers. Remember 9/11.
Using the word Islamism as the ultimate evil on earth and blaming all Muslims for it is a biased way to describe the reality. Such Islamism is indeed the creation of the west in its fight against the Eastern block, in order to take or maintain its control of energy production regions including the middle-east. The two points strategy was very simple and never hidden from the (awaken) public:
- control and secure the access to energy resources
- be sure that the US dollar is used for all transactions and that related profits go to western companies
If the local leaders tried to skip the above, even partially, the reaction was “regime change” and if islamists were ready to help, the west used them. The result was a disaster in all cases, one of the most terrible being the support for Khomeini to take power in Iran and avoid the return of an anti-western government. What a failure! Indeed even worse than the 20 years of war to replace the Talibans by … the Talibans.
People crying and whining that Islamism is a nightmare should remember that the nightmare was created by western politicians and businessmen. Muslims in general did not want Islamists to come to power, and most victims of Islamism are indeed Muslims.
The west identified two types of islamists: the good ones (that the west funds and trains, closing eyes on their crimes) and the bad ones.
- Al Qaida: a good one that turned into a very bad one
- the Chechen islamists in the 90’s: good ones that lost to very bad ones (Kadyrov, Islamist and pro-Russian!)
- the Bosnian islamists: good ones
- the “moderate” islamists fighting Assad in Syria: good ones that lost
- ISIS: bad ones officially, may have become good ones if they had killed Assad
- Hamas: a good one some years ago to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Became evil with time, and a devil on October 7th
The term terrorism is also prone to manipulation. Terrorists are most efficiently defined as a non state organization fighting a state. Identifying terrorists as good or bad then depends on the cause they fight for. If they fight for a cause you like, they are rather called “freedom fighters” or something similar. If they fight for a cause you do not like, they keep the terrorist attribute.
- French partisans were called terrorists by the Gestapo
- Bandera and his sympathy for the 3rd Reich is in some places honored as a fighter of Freedom against Communism, for examples in western Ukraine, in the Baltics or in Canada
- Hamas-like fighters in Syria were considered as fighters for democracy (!!) against Assad, trained and financed by the west
- Zionist groups like Irgun in the 40’s were a liberation army, not terrorists
This last point is interesting to develop. As you probably know, Palestine was under British mandate since the collapse of the Ottoman empire after WW1. The region was populated by a mix of people, including of course Arabs (Muslims and Christians), Jews and a few small minorities. Those people lived in peace in a region that was called Palestine and indeed was bigger than present Israel, for example including Jordan.
The actual creation of the Israeli state was obtained after several years of conflict with the British and the local Arabs, and terrorism (or liberation war depending on the viewpoint) was part of the process. As mentioned earlier, a lot of material is available, looking for example at Hagana or Irgun. The conflict became more and more violent between Jewish organizations and both British and Arabs during the 30’s.
Just to name a few key events:
- assassination of the British Minister of State for the Middle East in 1944
- attempt by the British to limit jewish emigration (White Paper in 1939)
- terror attack against the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing many British administration members
- regular attempts to illegally gain more territories from the Arab populations (still going-on!)
The peace between communities of course did not survive such troubled period, and ended with the first Israel/Arabs war in 1948. Understanding what is happening now is impossible without understanding the very origin of a conflict that did in no way started on October 7th 2023. Arabs also reacted aggressively when the Jewish emigrants started to flow in the region, an understandable reaction when people come to your place, kick you out and destroy your house!
The fact that their ancestors lived here centuries ago in no way can justify destroying the life of other populations. Only a controlled and negotiated process could have avoided the decades long conflict, but the British and western countries were not ready to take such responsibility and left the region alone, probably happy not to have to enter in conflict with the new state. It was may be also a way to clear their untold guiltiness of not being able or willing to protect European Jews from the Nazi killing machine.
Let’s now try to better understand and interpret what western media tell us, and spot the numerous lies that have been fed to the public over many decades.
Collection of lies: Palestine never existed and was a dry desert empty of people
This lie was constantly used since 1948 to justify the occupation of the region: “almost nobody lived there, we came and turned the desert into and oasis”. This is not true, and Palestine was a serious exporter of Europe, mostly for citrus fruits and olive oil. There were obviously problems, for example due to deforestation and lack of financing, especially from the Ottoman forces who occupied the region for a long period.
By the way, we should not forget that both Jews and Arabs are from semitic tribes, and the two languages have a lot of similarities. Racism against Arabs is then also antisemitism. Both Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived together in peace, before the massive arrival of European Jews who brought a new cultural component, a European one, quite foreign to the middle-east mentalities. The social and cultural gap between those Palestinian (often called oriental – Mizrahi) and European Jews still exists today in Israel. There are around 4 millions oriental Jews in Israel now, many of them lived in surrounding countries before 1948, and have been kicked out by their previous country. They are to be added to the millions of Palestinian Arabs that also lost their house over the same period, and this illustrates size of the human disaster over the past 70 years. All could have been avoided if the large nations had not chosen to look to the other side and wash their hands, although not forgetting to get the oil!
Collection of lies: war crimes
War crimes are always spotted or invented when talking about adversaries. The west has been very inventive over the past decades to make-up fake crimes:
- the Weapons of Mass Destruction of Saddam Hussein
- the genocide of Bosnian populations
- the chemical weapons used by Assad in Syria
- the unplugged incubators in Kuwait
- Bocha and many other crimes “committed” by Russia in ex-Ukraine
All of the above proved fake, but no apology nor update from medias. Here again part of the events systematically used as arguments for the liquidation of the Gaza population have not been proven true. The Israeli Haaretz new-paper that reported about Israeli copters being responsible for many dead from the music festival on October 7th is now under threat from the Israeli government. As usual, you do not censor lies, you censor the truth.
Collection of lies: Palestinians are all terrorists and are animals
A normal human immediately understands that such arguments are stupid and evil. Such wording, that was not condemned by any authorities in Israel (freedom of speech?) gives a disastrous image of the Israeli society. No need to further elaborate.
Similarities with Ukrainian Banderistan
As I mentioned in my previous article, we can see many common patterns between Israel and the Kiev regime. Is being sponsored by the US the origin of such patterns?
- absolute control of the information, including the killing of journalists to control opinion (the number of Palestinian journalists killed over the past weeks is appalling)
- like in ex-Ukraine, a slow but effective evolution took place, targeting the younger generations. The younger Israeli are far from the migrants who arrived in Palestine and constructed the kibbutzim, with an ideal of return to nature as mother land. I knew several of those people, and I do not recognize such spirit in todays IDF soldiers joking about killing women and kids in Gaza. Even much feared general Dayan had a more human attitude
- ethical failure, with politicians bragging about their plans to liquidate populations, soldiers laughing about the death of enemies, openly stealing property of victims, no to mention the behavior of political leaders
- arrogance in most public declarations, looking down at all their critics and claiming superiority in race, intelligence and culture
- full support from the west and the US, although Ukraine is now starting to lose its position and shall be soon left alone to capitulate
- like Kiev, Israel looks like, and is the outpost of the US lead western world in the Middle-East
- like Ukraine, Israel is in a bubble, isolated from the real world and did not, or rather did not want to acknowledge that the west is losing its leadership and that the world changes very fast, especially since 2022. And this is a fatal mistake
- natural resources in the ex-Ukraine are interesting for the west, so are the gas reserves in Gaza waters
- finally, an increased role of religious themes, biblical for Israel, with references to the chosen people and the need to dominate the world. Based on such beliefs, a repression of Christians in Israel can be expected, as already seen today with the Armenian district in Jerusalem. That sort of Jihad was also present in Ukraine, some public figures claiming that most European culture comes from Galicia, and that the Donbass had to be returned to Ukraine, but without its inhabitants…
Israel in the new multi-polar world
Since 1948, Israel has been able to resist the pressure from all surrounding countries and continue its progressive but regular ethnic cleansing, with more and more settlers taking away Palestinian properties, kicking owners out, arresting or killing them is they tried to resist.
Such behavior was possible for a simple reason: the active support of the US in funding and weapons. Looking for example at what is happening now, the US are sending parts of their own stock of weapons to Israel, and more importantly sent aircraft carriers and other warships to the Mediterranean and to the Persian Gulf. It is clearly a deterrent to stop neighboring countries to intervene and military support Gaza and the West Bank.
This works today as it worked many times in the past. But the dominance of the US is on its decline and we can assume that the US presence and influence in the Middle-East shall be considerably reduced in a not too far future.
For Israel, it means losing its main political and military support. Negotiations shall have to start, as proposed by China and Russia now. Ignoring such proposal is still possible today, but a growing pressure shall be done on Israel to change its policy.
Can that be done without a regional war? Probably not, as the west shall do everything possible to avoid losing its position, and like in Ukraine, war is definitely an option for the US. But like in Ukraine, the victims shall be many, and like for all destabilisation wars initialed as part of the Pax Americana, the result shall be a disaster.
A voice from the past
This short video of former French president Charles de Gaulle proved to be very accurate (sorry no english version).
The influence of neo-cons generated in Israel, like in Ukraine, a new type of politicians, relying on lies, arrogance, force and hate to come and stay in power. Like in Ukraine, this shall lead to the moral bankruptcy of the country and, sooner or later, its collapse.
De Gaulle also said: “Now, Israel is organizing on the territories it holds an occupation which can only lead to oppression, repression, expulsions, and against which there is already a resistance, which Israel calls terrorism.” He was indeed referring to what is happening right now.
The victims, like in Ukraine, shall of course be the Palestinians, but also the population of Israel, that just like Ukrainians, did not ask for that but shall have to pay the price.