Unsettling Settlement Voices

On every Jewish festival, Jewish voices say: “Umipnay chatoenu golinu mayartsaynu" - "Because of our sins we were expelled from our land".   It is believed that at a predestined time, God will send the Jews the Messiah and they will be able to return to the Promised Land.  Jews are to accept exile and not attempt to force their way back. They stayed away from Jerusalem for 2,000 years because their religion forbade them from returning, not because they could not return.  Yet today, those who are violating the laws of man and lay claim to ‘Eretz Yisrael’ as God’s land promised to them, are the ones who are betraying the very God they pretend to worship.  While many Jews promote peace and equality with their Arab kin, the cry for more land by others grows louder.

Fanaticism and hypocrisy are kith and kin – they are founded on ignorance, need, and greed; above all, by diversion.  The diversion is the manufacture of a false threat so that while the international community is engaged dealing with the non-existent threat, the real menace goes unnoticed - cultivates and intensifies.  For decades Israel played the part of the victim and for the last thirty, Iran has been set up as the threat so that Israel could continue its expansion into Palestinian and Arab land.    While the world is battling Iran, Zionists will continue to consume everything around them.

Another dimension is that the occupation bolsters the Israeli economy.  Palestinians have been forced into purchasing from the Israelis while they in turn ship the vast majority of their goods to Israel – with a huge trade gap in Israel’s favor.  By blocking and controlling the territories, Israel did its utmost to maintain this gap through lack of infrastructure –roads, communications system, water supply, health services, education, and so forth. This is a win-win situation as it draws cheap labor for Israel while promoting Israeli agriculture while diminishing that of the Palestinians.   The same principle applies for factories, and other establishments. 

Israel has always maintained that it cannot negotiate peace terms because Iran is a threat.  The crux of the matter is that Israel cannot live in peace for how else can it explain its expansion, its abuse and exploitation of millions under occupation?

In fairness to Israel, Iran did reveal to the world – so it thought – that Israel was a liability to the United States.  One would have thought that the political decision makers of this country would have put America’s security first.  But somehow in the heat of the Cold War, Washington was indifferent to the idea that Israel was undermining its national security –  but what happened after the Cold War?

Since 1948, Israel has conducted dangerous economic espionage against the United States while receiving aid.  These activities became far more aggressive in the 1960’s with the creation of the Office of Special Tasks (LAKAM) which according to the CIA had prioritized to "the collection of scientific intelligence in the U.S.". The report, classified SECRET, was released to the world by Iranian students who occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979^[i].  Israel in turn sells ‘stolen’ scientific intelligence to other countries, China, America’s rival, among them.  The United States and Israel agreed in 1951 not to spy on one another.   The existence of LAKAM and their activities has been noted in many other publication and interviews (see footnote).  

As the world led by the United States attempts to make peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Israel insists on Iran being a threat to their existence.  Israel’s biggest supporter, Henry Kissinger comes to mind who in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 told Richard Nixon that the Israelis are probably more likely than almost any other country to use their nuclear weapons.  He stated: “This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us”, “and may even have stolen from us.”  (David Stout, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon, New York Times (29 Nov. 2007).

Yet the finger is being pointed at Iran. 

The IAEA has repeatedly stated that Iran has not weaponized its civilian nuclear program.   To make the claim that the Islamic regime in Iran is a fundamentalist regime that wishes to acquire a nuclear bomb to attack Israel, defies all logic.   If they are indeed fundamentalists, then their strict adherence to Islam would require reverence of Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site making it inconceivable that they would cause any harm to this holy place.  In addition, Iran has compromised its national security by defending the Palestinians much as America has put Israel ahead of its own national security.  It is unimaginable to think that Iran would bomb Israel, should it acquire such a weapon as it would kill the very Palestinians and Israeli Arabs that it is defending - just as it is ludicrous to think that America would bomb Israel in order to kill Arabs in order to defend the Israelis it has always defended.  

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master of Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication and USC School of International Relations.  She is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups