#90 The Creation of Israel: A Bulwark against the Arabic World
The creation of the State of Israel is unique in today’s world: unlike any other contemporary state or society. The existing peoples who had been living in the area for a very long time were not asked to concur. Israel was created by dictate.
February 1956 Map of UN Partition Plan for Palestine, adopted 29 Nov 1947, with boundary of previous UNSCOP partition plan added in green. Retrieved from Wikipedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Israel was formally created in 1948 as a state. Ever since, the justification has been the holocaust in Germany. There has been enough truth in these assertions so that the non-Israeli Jewish community across the world has faithfully supported the country ever since. The new state decided that they wished for no interrelations with their Arab neighbours. They drove into exile a large proportion of the resident Palestinians and have oppressed those that remained. The situation is not the same apartheid state in South Africa after the 1950s, but with enough similarities to be striking. Recent international humanitarian groups have publicly defined Israeli/Palestinians as a form of apartheid. The consequences have been consistent: war and permanent conflict. Israel's survival as an independent state has been due to the support they have received from the USA. Israel has become the largest per head recipient of financial aid in the world. Israel has a nuclear arsenal and armed forces unlike any other nation in the region.
Since 1948, Israel has been ruled by Jewish politicians whose families came predominantly from Europe. Before 1948, a tiny proportion of the population was Jewish. After 1948, Jewish populations that had lived alongside Arabic speaking peoples were encouraged to move to Israel. A significant proportion of Jews in Israel today have arrived from the Arab world, and even later from Russia.
Implanting a European Jewish Israel in the middle of the Arab world without consulting the Arabs has had one vital consequence: it has made it impossible for a single Arab Regional Development. The Arab world potentially could have co-operated and industrialised, using oil revenues. The Arab world has a single language. They were the last section of the world to be colonised after 1918 and divided into nation-states. It had been the oil that had attracted Western geopolitical interest after the 1890s when warships began to use oil. After 1945, the only boundary change was the creation of Israel. The rest, created under the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1922, remained unaltered. The creation of Israel has permanently divided a once united people.
The Arab peoples have since divided along religious lines: Sunni versus Shia in particular. In the past, Christians, Jews, Sunni, Shia, and other minorities lived alongside one another. The Islamic religious divisions were just there from their past. But with the advent of Israel and national boundaries, division along ethnic and religious divides has taken greater importance. In a later blog, I will also discuss the War on Terror as well as the rise of radical Islamic ideas.
Israel has always been an unknown. From the beginning, she has attempted to expand the boundaries created by the agreement of the United Nations in 1948. After subsequent wars in 1967, she expanded again. She attempted an invasion of Lebanon that failed and wishes to have the Golan Heights recognised as hers rather than Syria's.
Israel herself has never recognised any international boundaries. The one time her foreign policy was published in English by Israel Shahak, it was clear that she wished to become the dominant country in the entire Arab world. Israel has become the dominant American ally in the region and has been supported, rightly or wrongly, ever since, with American money and armaments. Israel today is a key part of the USA’s global strategy to maintain her dominance as a world power.
Recommended reading
The creation of Israel is perhaps an over-published subject.
The work of Israel Shahak is essential. Shahak arrived in Israel in 1948, as a scholar and Peace activist. Their best-known work is: Jewish History, Jewish Religion: the Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Books 2003, third edition 2017.
An introductory book: Geoffrey Harms and Todd Ferry, The Palestine Israeli Conflict 2005, Pluto Books, fourth edition 2017.
Copyright Notice. This blog is published under the Creative Commons licence. If anyone wishes to use any of the writing for scholarly or educational purposes they may do so as long as they correctly attribute the author and the blog. If anyone wishes to use the material for commercial purpose of any kind, permission must be granted from the author.
The peoples of Western Europe had risen from one world of relative poverty and had learnt how to take the wealth from the Americas and transfer it to their own countries. This was slavery and latterly until 1920, indentureship. A whole set up of banks, shipping companies, and insurance companies had arisen to make these transfers possible. From the 1750s the European invaders turned their attention to Asia and systematically began the colonisation process anew. At the same time, as they attempted to colonise and extract the wealth of Asia, the colonising countries began the process we now recognise as industrialisation alongside the rapid growth of cities. The surplus resources extracted through colonisation were used to finance the growth of new industries.