Gantry 5

 

Why does the United States support Israel?

Bulletin No41 Decembre 2023  The US veto: how to defend the indefensible.
The United States vetoed a special UN Security Council resolution on Friday, December 8, created in response to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' invocation of Article 99 of the United Nations Charter.
The resolution, presented by the United Arab Emirates, received 13 votes in favor (including France), 1 abstention (the United Kingdom) and only 1 vote against, but with a preponderant vote due to the right of veto, that of the USA. The arguments of the representative of the United States are as pathetic as ever: no denunciation of the so-called “crimes of Hamas” in the resolution.
The reality is that Israel is only holding on thanks to financial support, particularly in arms and ammunition, from dominant imperialism. The reality is that this veto dashes any hope of an internationally mandated ceasefire and immediate aid to Palestinian victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state and army. The reality is that, even abandoned by everyone, the UN, which has been its instrument since 1945, Great Britain, which is its most faithful ally, France, US imperialism does not change. not one iota of his attitude. Biden may talk about the so-called “two-state solution,” but he doesn’t care about the fate of the massacred Palestinians. He (or his entourage) is even ready to lose the elections if Israel can continue its abuses and finally achieve the total annexation of Palestine.
This means that beyond partisan squabbles (the Democratic and Republican parties in the USA are hardly different), allowing Netanyahu to follow through is an essential priority for the dominant imperialist power.
Why such support? To answer this question, we must look at the history of Palestine, particularly in the 20th century .
At the origin of everything: the British project of the 19th and early 20th centuries
Since the second half of the 19th century, the United Kingdom and France have been, with the future Germany (which was only born in 1871), the dominant capitalist powers. They will then embark on the colonization of Africa and Asia, sometimes in a conflictual manner, finally, with the Entente Cordiale, in a negotiated manner. One of their common goals is the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. France seizes Algeria (from 1830 to 1857) and establishes a protectorate over Tunisia (1881), the United Kingdom militarily occupies Egypt, already independent of the Ottomans since 1848 (1882) then establishes a protectorate (1914) . The only provinces remaining loyal to the Ottoman Empire, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (which would constitute Libya), were conquered by Italy in 1911. The Ottoman Empire then only dominated the Asian part of the Arab-Berber world, which he lost following the First World War.
As early as the 1860s, Lord Palmerston, Conservative Prime Minister of Victoria for the second time (1859 – 1865), had envisaged the creation of a colony in the Middle East, on the territory then dominated by the Ottomans, of a buffer state, a sort of colony populated by Europeans in order to cut the Arab-Berber world in two.
In 1907, the Prime Minister was the Liberal Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Liberals and Conservatives clashed a lot under Victoria, the Liberals pushing for social reforms and the autonomy of Ireland, their historic leader, Gladstone even haughtily refused the French ambassador's request in 1871 for extradition of the Communards refugees in his country. But, at the beginning of the 1900s, a common point appeared between Conservatives and Liberals: the defense and extension of the colonial Empire. Campbell-Bannerman has an absolute majority in the House of Commons and also has an agreement with the recently created Labor Party. He then chaired an Imperial Conference, during which the status of  dominion  was ratified. This commission is made up of international academics and must reflect on the future of the Empire . Only extracts from the report were published. This suggested, among other things, dividing the Arab world into numerous states and installing within them, in Palestine, a colony which would be hostile to Arab interests and contribute to their permanent division. The text of the Commission's report states: "  The danger lies in the Mediterranean basin, the hinge between the West and the East, and the route from Great Britain to its colonies in the Far East, a route which passes through the canal from Suez. Indeed, from Rabat in Morocco to Mersin in Turkey, there is only one people enjoying a common history, a common civilization, a common language, the Arab people. There lie the possibilities of a possible national renaissance, and the resources of a probable power . ". What must be understood is that as things stood in 1907, it was only an imperialist project of the British State, and there was no question of the Jewish people. .
The entry of oil and the Zionists¹
In 1901 the Jewish National Fund was created to acquire land in Palestine and settle Jewish settlers there by means of sustained fundraising from wealthy donors (Jews and non-Jews, Anglo-Saxons in particular). The balance sheet of purchased land remains meager due to the resistance of Palestinian farmers and landowners.
In 1905, the Zionist movement (in which Russian Zionist Jews were in the majority) decided, to take advantage of British and French colonial aims, that Palestine would be the place of establishment for the Jews, after having ruled out several hypotheses, including those of Argentina, Cyprus, Uganda. Later, once the process was established in collaboration with the British imperialists, the Zionists refused the Soviet government's proposal (in March 1928) to found a "Jewish autonomous region" in the East of Russia, under the name of Birobidzhan.
It was on May 26, 1908 that oil gushed out of Iranian soil. The event occurs in Masdjed-e Soleyman, in the province of Khuzestan, located in the southwest of the country, near present-day Iraq. This is the first time that drilling has been successful in this part of the world. Seven years earlier, the British William Knox d'Arcy had obtained from the Shah of Persia a concession for oil exploration on three-quarters of his territory. So the British capitalists are going to exploit the oil. And this gives them a second reason to create this famous colony, not only to divide the Arab world, but also to get their hands on oil. In 1909, the Arcy concession was transformed into a new structure, the Anglo-Persian [1] Oil Company (APOC), which became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935, then the British Petroleum Company ( BP) in 1955.
If the war in Europe was still undecided, by 1916 we knew that the fate of the moribund Ottoman Empire had already been settled. This is why the French and British governments share the future remains, with the approval of the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. These are the Sykes-Picot agreements (named after an assistant to the British Foreign Secretary and a French diplomat, responsible for negotiating on behalf of the two countries), secret agreements signed on May 16, 1916. These agreements provide for dividing the regions taken from the Ottomans; the Middle East is divided, despite the promises of independence made to the  Arabs , into five zones:
- French blue zone, of direct administration made up of  current Lebanon  and  Cilicia  ;
- Arab Zone A, of French influence including the north of  present-day Syria  and the province of  Mosul  ;
- British red zone, of direct administration composed of  present-day Kuwait  and  Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq without the Mosul  region  );
- Arab Zone B, of British influence, made up of the south of current Syria,  current Jordan  and the future  Mandatory Palestine  ;
- Brown zone, of international administration, including Saint-Jean-d'Acre, Haifa and Jerusalem. The United Kingdom will gain control of the ports of Haifa and Acre.
These agreements are not valid, but they will be confirmed by the brand new League of Nations (League of Nations, ancestor of the UN), during the San Remo conference. Previously, in 1919, the French government ceded the Mosul region to the British, in exchange for a share of the profits from the oil that began to be discovered around Kirkuk, in the same region. The British therefore own all of what is now Iraq. The League of Nations gives France and the United Kingdom a  mandate  to "  lead to independence  " the peoples of the Middle East "  not yet capable of governing themselves  ", "  taking into account the wishes of these peoples  ", according to the final text of the Conference. In reality, the United Kingdom and France did not take into account the wishes of the populations and bloodily suppressed the revolts which broke out during their mandate, in particular, in  Iraq ,  Palestine  and  Syria . The British obtained management of the area which was to be international.
In the meantime, the nature of the buffer state that the British want to place in the Middle East is becoming clearer. We are starting to think seriously about the Zionists. The religious and cultural aspirations of the Jews will be all the more effectively exploited by the British and French leaders as the context of the end of the First Imperialist World War is that of the ascending movement of colonialism to continue the expansion of the capitalist market. For the English and French imperialist leaders, a Jewish colonial state in Palestine appears to be the strategic means to establish their domination of the Arab world and secure access to the region's wealth.
Theodor Herzl, author of the Basel program adopted during the 1st Zionist Congress in August 1897, had well anticipated the strategy of the English and French imperialists in the region when he wrote: "  For Europe, we will constitute in Palestine a piece of the bulwark against Asia. We would be the advanced sentinel of civilization against barbarism. ".
On June 4, 1917, the French “Secretary General of Foreign Affairs” (number two at the Quai d'Orsay), Jules Cambon, sent a letter to the Zionist leader Noam Sokolov in which he responded to his project to “develop Jewish colonization in Palestine” . He writes in particular: “  The French Government, which entered this current war to defend a people unjustly attacked, and which continues to fight to affirm the triumph of right over force, can only feel sympathy for your cause, of which victory is linked to that of the Allies. I am pleased to give you such assurance herewith. ".
On November 2, 1917 , the Secretary of the Foreign Office (British Minister of Foreign Affairs), the conservative Arthur Balfour, member of a government of national unity chaired by the Liberal Lloyd-George, in consultation with the allied countries during the 1 First World War, wrote a letter, called the Balfour Declaration , in which "  His Majesty's Government view favorably the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use all their efforts to facilitate the achievement of this objective  , it being clearly understood that nothing will be done which could prejudice either the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities existing in Palestine, nor the rights and political status which Jews enjoy in any other country. ". The letter is addressed to the wealthy businessman and Jewish Zionist leader, Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, to make it known to the Zionist Congress.
Balfour wrote in his memoirs in 1922 (5 years after his declaration):
“  We did not intend to take into account the feelings of the current inhabitants of Palestine because the four great powers are committed to Zionism. Whether Zionism is right or wrong, good or bad, has importance far beyond the wishes of the seven hundred thousand Arabs currently living in Palestine. ".
The British mandate over Palestine (1920 – 1948 ) [2]
Now in charge of governing Palestine, the British favor the arrival of Jewish settlers who buy land from Ottoman or Arab feudal lords. Large waves of settlers will flood into Palestine: 35,000 between 1919 and 1923, 82,000 between 1924 and 1931 and 217,000 between 1932 and 1938.
Furthermore, they organized with the French the division of the Arab world. Instead of the “great Arab kingdom” that they had promised to the Sharif of Mecca and king of Hejaz (1/3 of Arabia), they cut the Middle East into pieces. France separates Lebanon, which became a republic in 1926, from Syria, under the protectorate of the imperialist power. The British created, for Hussein's younger sons, the kingdom of Iraq (for Faisal in 1921) from which they detached the emirate of Kuwait and the kingdom of Transjordan (for Abdallah in 1921 emir, then in 1946 king, finally king of Jordan in 1949). But on the other hand, they helped the king of Nedjd (1/3 of Arabia), Abdelaziz ibn Séoud, to conquer the Hedjaz, from the eldest son of Hussein, Ali, a conquest which would lead to the creation of Saudi Arabia in 1932. The tactic of division has always been used by imperialist countries at the time of so-called decolonization, in reality the kings of Iraq, Jordan and Arabia will remain pawns of the British and, later, the USA, when They will take over. The British also got their hands on oil, discovered in the 1930s in Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain.
In May 1933: Nazis and Zionist leaders collaborated to transfer significant Jewish capital to Palestine with the signing of the so-called Haavara agreement (transfer): the Nazis in power in Germany approved the agreement between the companies of German and Jewish insurance and the Nazi power to organize the emigration of (fortunate) German Jews and the transfer of their capital to Palestine. Theodore Herzl had already written: “Anti-Semites will be our surest allies and anti-Semitic countries our allies. »
At the same time, the British colonial administration denied any national identity to the Palestinians: at most it recognized them as having a religious and cultural identity.
In 1936, the Arab population of Palestine revolted against the British occupiers, it was the Great Revolt which lasted until 1939. The British formed a commission to come to the aid of the Zionist settlers. It was Lord Robert Peel's commission as Britain's first plan to give the Zionist settlers a state.
The commission's report (presented in July 1937) recommended dividing Palestine into two states: a state for the Jews (which was not then claimed as such by the Zionists, it was until then 'a home) by granting them 20% of Palestine and a state for the Arabs on the rest.
It was during this Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936 to 1939 that the British colonial administration promulgated the law, known as the special law, authorizing administrative detention. This law (barely updated in its substance) is still in force in occupied Palestine.
The USA takes over from the British [3]
From 1942 to 1948, the USA, as a hegemonic imperialist power, entered the scene and became the main sponsor of Zionist colonization. In the midst of the Second World War, Zionist leaders anticipated the victory of the Allies and the emergence of American power.
Early May 1942: the so-called Biltmore Program (New York) was adopted by the Zionist Congress (co-chaired by Ben Gurion), with the main decisions:
― An official formulation (for the first time ) of the demand for a Jewish state in Palestine (abandonment of the Jewish national home formula) and its international recognition;
― The decision to form a Zionist military force alongside the Allies, under the supervision of the United States;
― The transfer of the center of international Zionist activity to the United States, for a strengthened alliance with this country: the Zionist colonial project and the American aims of military and economic control of the wealth of the region of the Arab world will henceforth constitute a one and the same objective.
Two statements by the first two leaders of the Zionist movement clearly express the role of the future Zionist state as the advanced base of Western imperialism; David Ben-Gurion declared in 1945: "  If the British agree to the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, we are ready to give them a base against Russia. » ; Nahum Goldman (president of the Zionist Congress) declared on October 24, 1945: "  The Zionists undertake to give full rights to the British to establish military maritime and air bases in Palestine in exchange for their agreement for a Jewish state on 65% of the Palestinian lands, and we will propose the establishment of US bases. ".
In February 1945, US leaders signed an agreement (secret, on the cruiser USS Quincy) with Saudi leaders  : the agreement provided for the protection of the Saudi royal regime (with the erection of a military base in the kingdom) in exchange access to Saudi oil; the Saudi leaders for their part did not oppose the erection of a state for the Jews. The United States is strategically positioned in the region and will become the main support of the future Zionist state.
The Partition Plan, the creation of the State of Israel and the Nakba [4]
On November 29, 1947 the imperialist powers, led by the United States, decided to give the Jews a state by voting in a UN resolution (No. 181). The vote on the resolution required 2 rounds: in the 1st round , one vote was missing to reach the 2/3 quorum; in the 2nd round , after pressure and corruption from the USA (on the Philippines, Haiti and Liberia), the resolution was adopted by 33 votes in favor, including that of the USSR, 13 votes against (including those of the Arab countries), and 10 abstentions (including those of China, Yugoslavia and the countries of South America). If the Soviets then, quite quickly, changed their minds, it is important to note the error that their vote constituted; we will come back to it later when trying to analyze this gesture.
This is the 1947 partition plan for Palestine in:
― An Arab state: 12,000 km², 735,000 inhabitants (including 10,000 Jews, or less than 1.5% of the population);
― A state for Jews: 14,200 km², 905,000 inhabitants (including 507,000 Arabs, or more than 55% of the population)
― An international zone, Jerusalem: 205,000 inhabitants (including 100,000 Jews)
While Jews then represented only 35% of the total population living in the territory of historic Palestine, and owned only 6% of the land, the Zionist entity was allocated 55% of the land. By leaving Palestine on May 14, 1948, the British had already placed the Zionists in positions of control of administrative power (town halls, land registry, police, justice, etc.). This international recognition driven by the imperialist powers will authorize the Zionists not to be satisfied with this progress: they will deploy the so-called Dalet plan by carrying out terrorist actions to expel Palestinians from several cities and to take over other parts. of historic Palestine. More than 72 massacres were carried out by terrorist units (Stern, Irgun, Haganah, etc.), including that of Deir Yassine (April 9, 1948).
Several hundred thousand Palestinians had already been expelled from territory controlled by the Zionists when, on May 14, 1948, as the British mandate ended, the State of Israel proclaimed its existence and independence. This massive expulsion and the massacres that go with it is called the Nakba (the catastrophe), in total, after the Arab Israeli war of 1948, 800,000 Palestinians will be expelled and take refuge in border countries. Following their refusal of the partition plan, the armies of the Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Lebanese volunteers) entered Palestine (May 15) in support of the Palestinians. The Zionist settlers are supported by Western mercenaries, called "michalinks" or volunteers (Jews and non-Jews), estimated at more than 3,500, mainly from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, the colonies of South Africa and 'North Africa.
The Zionist forces ensured victory and conquered 78% of the former Mandatory Palestine (50% more than what the partition plan granted them ). The Palestinian state decided by the UN, even reduced, will not see the light of day: Egypt annexes the Gaza Strip and Transjordan, which becomes Jordan, annexes the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It is important to note that now the Zionist state reaches the Red Sea and bisects the Arab world, separating Cairo from Damascus, Baghdad and even Amman .
We understand better the vital interest that the Zionists and their US protectors had in reaching the Red Sea in light of the events of 1956. In response to the nationalization (July 26, 1956) of the Suez Canal by the Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, England, France and the Zionist state combine to attack Egypt. For diametrically opposed reasons, the USSR, in support of Egypt and the USA, to preserve their links with other Arab countries (the three kingdoms) intervened and put an end to the aggression. Nationalization by a country led by Arab nationalists hostile to the USA deprived US multinationals of easy access to the Red Sea via the canal.
 
In conclusion
We have already had the opportunity to talk about the rest. The USA supported, in 1967 and 1973, and afterwards, it supported all the actions of the apartheid state, from the lure of the Oslo Accords to the current massacre in Gaza, including the repression of the various intifadas, the imprisonments massive demonstrations of political opponents and other wars waged in Gaza after the establishment of the blockade. And they now support Israel's annexation of all of Palestine.
They have supported from the beginning the colonizing State in its colonization approach, which is a specific approach, not an exploitative colonization, like France in Algeria, but a substitution colonization, the replacement of the indigenous Palestinians by Jewish settlers. emigrants from Europe. They support the Zionist state and allow it everything, quite simply because it is their baby, it is their cop in the Middle East, to control the raw materials, to ensure that it perpetuates the division of the Arab world, and now, to put the control of the gas off the coast of Gaza, to compete with Russian gas.
The Palmerston, Campbell-Bannerman, Balfour plan is now in place, even if it is no longer the British monopolies which mainly pull the strings, but the American multinationals.
Contrary to what some people think, Zionists do not rule the USA, they serve imperialist multinationals. They are an important, even essential, asset in their game. But it is Uncle Sam who commands and uses Israel in his continuous action of domination of the capitalist world for decades. There is no question for the USA of giving up control of resources in the Middle East, nor the business of dividing the Arab peoples. Biden may well lose his elections, capitalism at the imperialist stage will continue to operate in the USA, for the greater good of the shareholders of US multinationals.