The very same United States of America that imposes harsh sanctions against Russia for its military annexation of the Crimea is now to formally endorse and actively support Israel’s decades-long military occupation of the Golan Heights since it was seized from Syria during Israel’s expansionist war of 1967. Last Friday, President Donald Trump announced that America was recognising the Golan Heights as now belonging to Israel. So much for the ‘democracy’ that America boasts as leading in the world.
Although Washington has not yet formalised this sudden policy shift, the presidential announcement has already stirred a hornet’s nest globally. International condemnation came immediately from Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran and several Arab governments. The most significant protest at the planned US action came from the Syrian anti-government rebel groups, many of them being supported by Washington. Several of the Syrian opposition forces that have been receiving US support are expected to be embarrassed by the US move and some have already criticised it.
This blatant support for Israeli aggression is likely to undermine the US’ credibility as an ally of Syria’s anti-government pro-democracy rebellion. Washington will be seen as cynically using the Syrian rebel movement not in order to recognise their sovereignty but merely to undermine the Syrian state for the benefit of Israel, the long-time enemy of the Arab peoples.
Leave aside the oppression of the remnant of Syrians who still inhabit that sliver of strategically important mountain range, the Israeli occupation of the Golan since 1967 remains in direct violation of international law that protects state boundaries. At the same time, cocooned by the US’ veto power in the UN Security Council, Tel Aviv continuously flouts numerous United Nations’ resolutions demanding the unconditional return of the territory to Syria.
In fact, Israel remains the state which continues to violate collectively the most number of UN resolutions ranging from international protocols protecting national boundaries to international laws governing arbitrary shootings, bannings, abductions and, detentions of thousands of Palestinians. The detained Palestinians, only a minority of whom have been linked to pro-independence guerrilla actions, also include schoolchildren and mothers with infants.
Tel Aviv is also in continuous violation of various strictures against Israel by various UN specialised agencies such UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, and the UN Human Rights Council. These pertain to such things as ensuring proper schooling for children in Israeli occupied territories, the rights of land owners being systematically evicted from their homes and businesses, the right of proper access roads and, convenient access to socio-economic infrastructure facilities (schools, shops and medical care) for Palestinians evicted from their neighbourhoods. Such evicted Palestinians lack housing, utilities, and services in the locations where they are compelled to squat or to seek refugee shelter.
The recent twin actions by Washington – both sudden Trump moves – to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s political capital and now, to recognise Israel’s formal annexation of the Golan, squarely place the US alongside Israel as a major flouter of international laws and UN protocols.
President Trump’s downplaying of the recent White nationalist mass killing of New Zealand Muslims, coupled with this latest blatant ignoring of international laws pertaining to Israel, are both in line with Donald Trump’s general outlook that empathises with White racism as well as sympathises with authoritarian states.
Most commentators are now reminding us about Trump’s right-wing leanings and, pointing out that all his actions and ad hoc policy decisions broadly fall in line with the kind of right wing politics that is comfortable with White supremacism, sexism and the careless debasing of the natural environments.
The recent massacre of Muslims in New Zealand by a lone White nationalist militant has alerted the whole world to the dangers of White nationalism and racism. Analysts are currently busy studying the 80 plus page long ‘manifesto’ of the Christchurch killer and, making the thematic links with White supremacist ideology and ethnic supremacism. Supremacist ideology also informs societal thinking across the globe generating ethnic conflict and inter-ethnic violence. This kind of ideology begins with a concept of a Divine selection and consequent superiority. A second element is the presumption of an evident, substantive, superiority in terms of civilisational attributes (culture, technology), and the third element is the community survival threat perception (degeneration, extinction). All these ideological threads are to be seen in Zionism.
This siege mentality thread can be seen in Sinhala ultra-nationalism (“we have nowhere else to go”). It is echoed in the very practice of the Zionist state of Israel. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu pushed through a new basic law that declared Israel to be an exclusively Jewish state with the implication that Israeli Jews are, therefore, now the sole, full, citizens of Israel. The new basic law implies that all other communities in Israel, namely, Arab (Muslim, Christian), Druze, and Syriac-Aramaic, are reduced to secondary level citizens.
After seventy years of totally illegal territorial expansion into Palestine and ethnically divisive and repressive colonial rule, Israel has gone a step further. It is now focusing on the consolidation of territorial and demographic gains that, on the one hand, further build the foundation of an ethnic exclusive state and on the other, destroys the future of the displaced populations. Coupled with its Apartheid-style measures against the people of Occupied Palestine and its systematic, eviction of non-Jews from their homes and neighbourhoods in Israel and Palestine, the state of Israel today, more than ever before, resembles the genocidal state of Nazi Germany. Later this week, the people of Occupied Palestine will observe ‘Land Day’ on March 29, the annual protest day by which Palestinians mark their original eviction from their homelands across what later became Israel.
It is yet another irony that Israel’s program of forcible acquisition of living space for Jews by evicting non-Jews is reminiscent of Hitler’s notorious Lebensraum geopolitical strategy of aggressive expansion beyond Germany’s borders at the time. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian non-Jews has been allowed by the Western powers to proceed by military aggression in 1947-49, and again in 1967 and 1973 and, by civilian state settlement programs that have been ongoing for decades. Nazi Germany actually never enjoyed such big power sponsorship for its ethnic cleansing as does Israel.
A recent public opinion survey among ‘Conservative’ (read fundamentalist) Christians in the USA found that over half of them felt it was justifiable to support Israel’s forcible dominance over the whole of Palestine, including the eviction of now-Jews. This is because that would give the Conservative Christians access to the mythical site (Israel) of Jesus’ hoped-for return to ‘save’ the ‘chosen’ Christians (the fundamentalists, of course).
Washington uses this kind of electoral constituency endorsement to justify its support for Israel’s continued aggressive occupation and expansionism – masking the real geopolitical role played by Tel Aviv as the West’s proxy in the region. When President George Bush Snr. first launched an invasion of Iraq, he explained to a gathering of Conservative Christian church leaders that that military venture was part of America’s God-given task to spread ‘Christendom’ across the globe.
This is the same general imperialist outlook of Washington that includes Israel’s role as a key regional player in West Asia on behalf of Washington.