    A Zionist War

    By Kristoffer Larsson

    Some weeks ago I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s great production Born
    the Fourth of July for the second time. In the movie, Ron Kovic (played
    by the handsome as always Tom Cruise) signs up for the army. He wants to
    go to Vietnam to fight Communism. "Better dead then red" is his motto.
    He leaves for Vietnam as a well-trained, young, brave American standing
    up for democracy fully prepared to die in order to fight the Communist
    threat wherever it arises. When he comes back from Vietnam, he is
    paralyzed from the waist and down. But he’s not meet by his fellow
    citizens as a hero. Instead he is met by demonstrators in his own age
    setting American flags on fire. He doesn’t understand why. Expressing
    his hatred for the demonstrators when at the Bronx Veteran Hospital, he
    soon comes to realize the black nurses have quite another view of the
    war. As a male nurse explains to him, "Vietnam is the White man’s war,
    the rich man’s war." Later, as many other Americans in Vietnam, Kovic
    came to realize that war was not about democracy at all. Young Americans
    like himself were sent there to oppress a people fighting for their own
    freedom.

    Some decades later, the world’s biggest war-machine is now under way
    with genocide once again, this time in Iraq. The mass slaughtering is
    implemented by young boys who aren’t really sure why they’re there, but
    it’s ordered by the White House on behalf of a ruthless, powerful elite.
    It was no surprise that Iraq didn’t possess any weapons of mass
    destruction. After all the U.S. is not stupid enough to attack a state
    that actually so does - it could be dangerous! But although we for sure
    know that this war indeed was not a "preemptive war" or about
    "liberating" Iraq, the "war for oil"-theory - adopted by the greater
    majority in the anti-war movement - loses ground by the day. One ought
    to at least question if oil was the main reason for going to war. Oil
    tastes good, but the Americans want cheap oil, not expensive. The
    occupation of Iraq cost the American tax payers more then 5.8 Billion
    dollars a month. [1] Thus, it would have been cheaper to support
    dictators in the region instead of overthrowing them - with the result
    of almost no oil at all. But this is not a White man’s war. Nor is it
    the oil companies’ war. No, this is a Zionist war.

    In his outstanding essay The Shadow of Zog, Israeli author Israel Shamir
    writes about what was probably the real reason for invading Iraq:

      "As the head of the Occupation Administration, Jay Garner's task is to
      create a new Iraq, friendly to Israel. The Jerusalem Post, a hard-line
      Zionist daily published by Conrad Black, friend of Pinochet and Sharon,
      carried an interview with one of his wannabe Quislings, Ahmad Chalabi's
      right hand man, Musawi.

      'Musawi talks enthusiastically of his hopes for the closest possible
      ties with Israel. There will be no place for Palestinians in the new
      Iraq, for the large Palestinian community is regarded by INC leaders
      (and presumably by their Zionist instructors) as a loathsome fifth
      column. Instead, an 'arc of peace'; would run from Turkey, through Iraq
      and Jordan to Israel, creating a new fulcrum in the Middle East.'

      The Occupation Regime in Iraq was installed by the US army in the
      interests of Zionists, and it may be rightly called ZOG, Zionist
      Occupation Government if anything."[2]

    The war on Iraq - just like the U.S.-threats against Iran - can be
    traced to Israel’s interests in the region. Israel and its powerful
    lobby has for long been after the U.S. to deal with the Iraqi regime.
    The destabilization of the region is more favorable to Israel than it is
    to the U.S. After discussing "what is possibly the unacknowledged real
    reason and motive behind the policy" of going to war on Iraq, historian
    Paul W. Schroeder, in a footnote, wrote that if this is accurate

      "it would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is
      common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller
      powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I
      know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting
      as the proxy of a small client state."[3]

    The Jews constitute no more then between 2% and 2.5% of the American
    population, a fact which seems hard to believe for most Americans.
    According to a poll, published in October 2002, the average non-Jewish
    American believed that no less then 18% of the population were Jews.

    Every fourth American asked answered that between 10% and 19% of the
    Americans were Jewish, while almost every fifth guessed that the Jews
    constitute between 20% and 29%. Some 12% thought the number was between
    30 and 49%! "Pretty wild?" Lenni Brenner comments, and continues:

      "But why should gentile Americans know better? Their guesses are based
      on what they see. Turn on the TV, go to the movies, pick up a newspaper,
      follow an election, and in every case Jewish involvement is far above
      2.5%. (...) Twelve percent of our Jews think they are 2% of Americans,
      13% think Jews are 3%, and 11% say they don't know, which is also a
      'proper' answer. But 7 % of America's Jews think they are 1% of
      Americans. Five percent of the Jews thought Jews are 4%. Ten percent of
      the Jews said they are 5%. Eighteen percent believed Jews are 6-10%. Six
      percent estimated our Jews to be 11-15%, and 18% of America's Jews
      projected themselves as over 15% of the population, a whopping margin of
      error of over 600%."[4]

    However, being a Jew does not make one a Zionist (although,
    unfortunately, almost all organized Jews are Zionists). In fact, the
    majority of the (non-organized) American Jews opposed the Iraqi War. But
    the way-too-powerful Israel lobby did support it. Its strong support for
    the war was definitely a major factor that shouldn’t be overseen. Still
    today Zionist Jews stands for a big share of the contributions to the
    two big parties in America. As the Swedish daily Aftonbladet pointed
    out,

      "The Jews pump enormous amounts of money into American politics, 30
      times more then the Arab Americans. They have power. They rule by the
      motto 'money talks'."[5]

    As a matter of fact, close to half the American billionaires are Jews
    (This phenomenon is however not limited to the United States. Six of the
    seven Russian Oligarchs are Jews![6]). In his foreword to late Professor
    Israel Shahak’s great book 'Jewish history, Jewish religion', the American
    dissident and author, Gore Vidal reveals a story which has affected the
    Middle East in a crucial way during the last sixty years:

      "Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional
      historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had
      been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for
      president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in
      cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why
      our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack
      nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took
      this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene
      corruption of American politics. (...)

      I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I
      will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political
      and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

      Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever
      hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in
      a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to
      support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because
      one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted,
      there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no.
      But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or
      intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an
      unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media."

    Shahak himself translated an article which appeared in hebrew in
    Kivunim, the journal of The World Zionist Organization, in February
    1982, and has become known as the Kivunim-plan. The article, written by
    a Oded Yinon, had the title A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen
    Eighties and its idea for the Middle East was "based on the division of
    the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the
    existing Arab states," as Shahak summarized it. Although he considered
    it way too optimistic, or in fact "pure fantasy," Shahak added that

      The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel,
      into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking.
      For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and
      probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about
      the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The
      dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the
      separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this
      aspect of the plan is very old.[7]

    As happens, in the New York Times in November 2003, an article appeared
    by former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former
    editor of the Times, Leslie H. Gelb, with the headline 'The three-state
    solution'. The idea presented was that the U.S. should consider dividing
    Iraq into three different states with "Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the
    center and Shiites in the south." Gelb writes that "This three-state
    solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades... But times
    have changed."[8] Thus, the plan conceived by Zionists is everything but
    dead.

    While almost the whole world denounces Israel’s brutal treatment of the
    Palestinian people, the Zionists demonstrate their control over
    Washington. Not only do they finance a great deal of the presidential
    campaigns, they also have mainstream media in their control. "For the
    media is the nerve system of a modern state," writes Shamir.

      Modern democracy in practice in a very complicated society can be
      compared to a sophisticated computer. Its machinery can function
      successfully on one condition: there is a free flow of information
      across the system. While every input is instinctively checked and sieved
      on one criterion, whether it is good for Jews, it is not odd that the
      machine produces such freak output as "revenge on Babylon for its
      destruction of Jerusalem in BC 586". Indeed, in long-gone 1948 the first
      ruler of Israel, David Ben Gurion, promised: "We shall mete historic
      vengeance to Assyria, Aram and Egypt". Now it comes to pass, as Iraq,
      Syria and Egypt are targeted by Zog.[9]

    Three decades after the death of Ben Gurion, the Guardian reports that
    "troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and
    severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon."[10]
    It took some time, but the prophecy has come true. But the late Ben
    Gurion did not just have dreams of meting revenge. He had dreams of
    creating a Greater Israel, too. In a speech in Knesset, on the third day
    of the Suez War, as then Prime Minister he recognized that the real
    purpose of fighting the war was "the restoration of the Kingdom of David
    and Solomon" to its biblical borders.[11] His successor Ariel Sharon has
    the same dream, and is fully prepared to fulfill it when given the
    opportunity. When the time is right, the mass slaughter and expulsion of
    the remaining Palestinians in the region will take place, no doubt.

    Jeff Blankfort refers to Washington as the "the Zionists' Most Important
    Occupied Territory". He is right. Zionist Jews are more powerful then
    ever before. With the devoted support from Zionist Christians, Israel’s
    interests are secured. The Zionist grip over American foreign policy on
    the Middle East has become impossible to deny. It is not in the interest
    of America to always do what’s best for Israel. The U.S. is not ruled by
    the Americans, but by an elite and lobbies that finance (and threaten)
    politicians into obedience. Fighting wars in countries most Americans
    can’t find on maps are of course not in the interest of the people.
    Despite greedy capitalists, there is one major factor that has to be
    taken into consideration when finding the motives for war. Far too many
    underestimate the strong importance Zionism plays in American foreign
    (and, to a lesser extent, domestic) affairs.

    The U.S. is a "lobbyocracy" - a state ruled by powerful lobbies.
    Politicians are dependent of financial support from them to even stand a
    chance in electoral races. So is the case with the contemporary regime
    in Washington. President Bush and colleague war criminals in the White
    house have stocks in the war industry and are financed by it. They
    personally gain from the war. However, the American foreign policy on
    the Middle East and the unreserved U.S. support to Israel cannot be
    explained simply by this fact. Control over the Iraqi oil supplies alone
    are not reason enough for sending 150 000 American Soldiers to Iraq, at
    so high a cost. It is important to acknowledge that there is devoted
    Zionists in leading positions fully prepared to do whatever necessary as
    long as it’s good for Israel. I’m speaking of the neoconservatives,
    nicknamed the neocons. Actually, Israel was the main issue
    for the neocons to leave the Democratic Party, where they once were to
    be found. Back in 1993, Professor of Political Science, Benyamin
    Ginsburg wrote:

      "One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their
      attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with
      a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American
      military preparedness and increasingly enamored of Third World causes.
      In the Reaganite right's hard-line anti-communism, commitment to
      American military strength, and willingness to intervene politically and
      militarily in the affairs of other nations to promote democratic values
      (and American interests), neocons found a political movement that would
      guarantee Israel's security."[12]

    The neocons’ commitment to Israel, the great influence of the Jewish
    lobby and the captivation of the Christian Communities by Zionism, is
    indeed the explanation for the constant U.S. support to Israel. It might
    seem foreign to some, but today it would be wrong referring to Israel as
    the client state of U.S. Nowadays it’s more correct to say it’s the
    other way around if anything. This was well put by Israeli born musician
    Gilad Atzmon, when interwieved:

      "I think that originally Israel was there to support western colonialism
      (Balfour Declaration, etc.). It didn't stop there. American
      administrations realised in the late '70s and '80s that the only real
      danger to western globalization is Arab opposition and Islamic
      resistance. Israel was there to maintain a continuous conflict in the
      region. The Americans got involved in the peace process, not in order to
      push for peace, but rather to maintain the conflict forever. So, in a
      sense, at least historically, you are right. Israel was there to serve
      American interests, but things have changed. In the last ten years we
      face a shift in the balance of power. The new bond between Zionists,
      Republican, and right-wing Christian groups introduced a completely new
      phase in the American-Israeli relationship. I think that American people
      would do themselves a great favour if they start to scrutinise the acts
      of their government. Americans should ask themselves whether it is
      American interests that are looked after or rather Israeli ones. The war
      in Iraq is a good place to start such an intellectual exercise."[13]

    In the case of the war on Iraq, the interests of greedy politicians
    selling themselves to the highest bidder (or keeping their mouth shut if
    they disagree), and the interests of the devoted Zionists as the neocons
    are, go hand in hand. Peace will not come to the Middle East until the
    Americans have liberated themselves from the Zionist’s grip over
    Washington and some peoples´ conviction of always doing what’s best for
    Israel over what’s best for America. Conservative Pat Buchanan well
    summarized what the neocons´ ideology is all about:

      "What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make
      the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on
      Islam, and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it."[14]

    Truer words have never been written. In the end the Americans, just like
    Kovic, will have to ask themselves the one crucial question: What is it
    all good for us?

    Kristoffer Larsson

    kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu

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    [1] Iraq Monthly War Cost Rises To $5.8 Billion, Set To Go Higher;
    http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002494.html

    [2] Shadow of Zog; http://www.israelshamir.net/english/shadowofzog.html

    [3] Iraq: The Case Against Preemptive War;
    http://www.amconmag.com/10_21/iraq.html

    [4] The Demographics of American Jews;
    http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner10242003.html

    [5] Freden dör på stadens gator;
    http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/0010/15/israel.html

    [6] The Oligarchs, by Uri Avnery;
    http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery08032004.html

    [7] A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eightees, translated by Israel
    Shahak with a foreword;
    http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.
    html

    [8] The three-state solution, by Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times,
    November 25 2003; http://quicksitebuilder.cnet.com/supfacts/id365.html

    [9] Shadow of Zog; http://www.israelshamir.net/english/shadowofzog.html

    [10] Destroying Babylon;
    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000171.php

    [11] Jewish History, Jewish Religion, by Israel Shahak (p. 8 in the
    Swedish edition)

    [12] Quoted in "The Shadow of Zog".

    [13] The Gilad Atzmon Interview;
    http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/1674134.php

    [14] Whose war?; http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html