Two occupations, one resistance
(Summer 2006)

The crisis in Lebanon has refocused attention on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and we're being told--as we are always told--that Israel has just been "responding" to Arab misdeeds. But the current crisis did not start on July 12, and I'm going to focus my comments on some historical background to the current crisis, which we can get back to during discussion.

In UIAC and in the antiwar movement generally, we've been asked why we link the Israeli occupation of Palestine with the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The question of support for the Palestinians was an early source of division in the U.S. antiwar movement. Radicals, who try to see to the root of issues, saw the two occupations as growing from the same root cause. Liberals saw raising the Palestinian issue as an unrelated distraction that would alienate potential antiwar activists. Michael Rack can tell us more about how that played out in the early antiwar movement.

Locally, we have had this discussion in fits and starts, with no real opposition to connecting the issues of Iraq and Palestine and yet no firm understanding of the connection. Obviously, I see the two occupations as closely related or else I wouldn't be a member of both PJP and UIAC. Also, the ISO has shaped my views on Israel for almost twenty years. But I'm not thoroughly versed on all the history involved, so I'll just try to outline the basic connection I think we should make between the occupations of Iraq and Palestine.

The basic argument is that both occupations are part of the imperialist effort to control the Middle East and access to its oil, and one reason I think we should make the connection is that our opponents do.

Zionism started in the late 19th century as a movement to establish a Jewish state--not necessarily in Palestine, but somewhere. Very early on, Zionism offered the services of that proposed state to the British empire. Zionist founder Theodor Herzl promised that Israel would be part of "the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism." Barbarism to them meant Arab nationalism and self-rule that would threaten imperialist control.

Especially after WWI, Britain and the U.S. saw the growing importance of oil and the advantage of having "friends" in the Middle East. And lo and behold, in 1917 the British issued the Balfour Declaration, stating that the British government supported Zionist plans for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine.

On a wave of sympathy for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and with British and U.S. backing, the U.N. established the Jewish state in Palestine in 1948. In 1951 an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explicitly repeated Herzl's offer of service to imperialism, in these words:

"Israel is to become the watchdog. There is no fear that Israel will undertake any aggressive policy towards the Arab states when this would explicitly contradict the wishes of the U.S. and Britain. But if for any reason the Western powers should sometimes prefer to close their eyes, Israel could be relied upon to punish one or several neighboring states whose discourtesy to the West went beyond the bounds of the permissible."

And again, the "discourtesy" was the desire of Arabs to rule themselves and have control over their own resources.

Since its founding, Israel has become that watchdog for imperial interests--a place to supply with weapons and a place to test them--a place to try out techniques of torture and learn how to control an indigenous population--a place to practice the big lie that powerful oppressors are really innocent victims.

In 1967, Israel demonstrated its ability to defeat Arab states during the Six Day War, and increasingly since then the U.S. has propped up the Israeli state with the end result of making Israel the world's fourth largest military power.

Between 1967 and 1972, U.S. aid to Israel jumped from $6.4 billion a year to $9.2 billion a year. In May 1973, Democratic Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson declared that "the strength and Western orientation of Israel on the Mediterranean and Iran on the Persian Gulf safeguards U.S. access to oil...contain[ing] those irresponsible and radical elements in certain Arab states, who, were they free to do so, would pose a grave threat indeed to our principle sources of petroleum in the Persian Gulf."

Most Americans are raised to hold positive, somewhat romantic ideas about Israel, and our media reinforces those beliefs, but the Israelis' first occupation of Lebanon and their brutal response to the first Intifada caused some people to start questioning them. After 9/11, however, Israel rushed to take advantage of the tragedy by saying, basically, "now you know what WE'VE suffered from all these years" and aligning itself even more closely with the U.S. in its "war on terror."

There is an debate now taking place about whether the tail is wagging the dog in the case of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and whether it really is in the U.S.'s interest to support Israel. Two scholars named Mearsheimer and Walt have produced a study concluding that support for Israel is NOT in the U.S.'s interests and that the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.--primarily represented by a lobby called AIPAC--bears the primary responsibility for leading the U.S. to support Israel as unconditionally as they do.

The pro-Israel lobby IS very well-organized and effective, and its power especially in buying Congressmen and stifling debate should never be dismissed or downplayed. But I believe that the U.S. government does act in its own interests--not OURS, but theirs--in making sure of the survival of a dependable friend in an oil-rich region of the world.

I think most people in UIAC agree that the U.S. is in Iraq for that reason--that the Middle East is strategically and economically important not only to the U.S. but also to its competitors in Europe and Asia. Control over the region means that the U.S. has access to oil, but in a competitive economic system, it also means that the U.S. controls the access its competitors will have.

That's the overview of how the U.S. war on Iraq and the Israeli war on Palestine and now Lebanon are connected.

This is what endtheoccupation.org says about their leaflet entitled Dual Occupations:

"The US has imported into Iraq many of the repressive measures that have failed to bring "security" to Israel and have turned the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a tinderbox. Increasingly, the two occupations are coming to resemble each other, as the occupiers actively collaborate to put down indigenous resistance.

Socialist Worker adds this:

"It's no coincidence that the U.S., which has long provided Israel with military and financial aid, is now using the same tactics in Iraq that Israeli forces have used against the Palestinians.... Israeli military and intelligence officials have provided direct assistance to the U.S. in carrying out these tactics, which include the use of aggressive urban warfare, house-to-house searches, wide-scale arrest campaigns, ... torture, ... an elaborate system of watchtowers and checkpoints, ... the use of armored bulldozers against the houses of suspected militants and the attempt to develop collaborator networks to solicit information from the local population about resistance activities."

The current war and occupation in Iraq is an outrage and we all oppose it. It has lasted three years. The previous Israeli occupation of Lebanon lasted 18 years. The occupation of Palestine has lasted almost 40 years. The dispossession of Palestinians has lasted almost 60 years. The U.S. openly acknowledges and even boasts about its plan to re-shape the Middle East. It openly and unconditionally supports the Israelis politically in the UN, militarily with weapons and shared tactics and training, and monetarily with our tax dollars. In return, Israel has repeatedly offered and provided assistance to U.S. imperialism.

So the U.S. and Israel know they're in the same struggle and know they have to work together. Groups that oppose them should understand the same thing.