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ISBN: 9781771861830

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Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East

From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform

One US military leader has called Israel “the intelligence equivalent of five CIAs.” An Israeli cabinet minister likens his country to “the equivalent of a dozen US aircraft carriers,” while the Jerusalem Post defines Israel as the executive of a “superior Western military force that” protects “America’s interests in the region.” Arab leaders have called Israel “a club the United States uses against the Arabs,” and “a poisoned dagger implanted in the heart of the Arab nation.”

Israel’s first leaders proclaimed their new state in 1948 under a portrait of Theodore Herzl, who had defined the future Jewish state as “a settler colony for European Jews in the Middle East under the military umbrella of one of the Great Powers.” The first Great Power to sponsor Herzl’s dream was Great Britain in 1917 when foreign secretary Sir Arthur Balfour promised British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In 1967 Israel launched a successful war against the highly popular Arab nationalist movement of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, the most popular Arab leader since the Prophet Mohammed. Nasser rallied the world’s oppressed to the project of throwing off the chains of colonialism and subordination to the West. He inspired leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Muammar Gaddafi.

Viewing Israel as a potentially valuable asset in suppressing liberation movements, Washington poured billions into Israel’s economy and military. Since 1967, Israel has undertaken innumerable operations on Washington’s behalf, against states that reject US supremacy and economic domination. The self-appointed Jewish state has become what Zionists from Herzl to an editor of Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, have defined as a watch-dog capable of sufficiently punishing neighboring countries discourteous towards the West.

Stephen Gowans challenges the specious argument that Israel controls US foreign policy, tracing the development of the self-declared Jewish state, from its conception in the ideas of Theodore Herzl, to its birth as a European colony, through its efforts to suppress regional liberation movements, to its emergence as an extension of the Pentagon, integrated into the US empire as a pro-imperialist Sparta of the Middle East.

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Contributors

Stephen Gowans

Stephen Gowans is an independent political analyst whose principal interest is in who influences formulation of foreign policy in the United States. His writings, which appear on his What’s Left blog, have been reproduced widely in online and print media in many languages and have been cited in academic journals and other scholarly works.
Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

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Chapter One examines the history of anti-semitism as a tool of the political Right. The chapter explores how the roots of anti-semitism go much farther back than Hitler, but trace their roots … 14 $1.40

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Chapter Two focuses on the roots of political Zionism. Since its creation by Theodor Herzl, Zionism has envisaged a return to an imagined glorious past. The distinguishing feature of political … 11 $1.10

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Chapter Three focuses on the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic. The chapter explores the creation of the colonial settler state of Israel, aided by the British after the First World … 13 $1.30

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Chapter Four focuses on Israel’s ties to imperialism. The chapter explores how Israel had aided in the imperial mission of the West in the Middle East and how its own interests tie in with … 12 $1.20

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Chapter Five focuses on the division between the ideologies of Arabism and Islamism which arose in the Arab States during the mid-twentieth century. Arabism spawned Arab socialism, which promoted … 12 $1.20

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Chapter Six explores Nasserism. As a nationalist and socialist ideology, Nasserism, which took its name from the Egyptian leader and president Gamal Abed Nasser, greatly influenced and inspired … 19 $1.90

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Chapter Seven focuses on the ‘Naksa’ or defeat of the Arab states and the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli army during the 1967 War, or the June War. The chapter explores the … 26 $2.60

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Chapter Eight focuses on the progress being made by Third World countries in the United Nations General Assembly as they began to overthrow the virtual monopoly of First World countries with … 12 $1.20

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Chapter Nine focuses on Saddam Hussian. During the 1970s, Saddam used Iraq’s oil wealth to pursue ambitious programs of social reform and economic uplift, earning him the plaudits of the … 12 $1.20

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Chapter Ten focuses on Syria. Before the British and French divided Turkey’s West Asian possessions in 1920, Syria comprised territory covering today’s Palestine, Israel, Jordan, … 13 $1.30

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Chapter Eleven focuses on the ideology of the Israeli Settlers. Settler colonialism is a system through which natives are displaced by immigrants. Under this system, the natives are defined as … 13 $1.30

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Chapter Twelve focuses on Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It removed Iran as a sphere of exploitation for US investors and created a new pole of resistance to the US imperialist … 26 $2.60

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The conclusion Diversion reflects on how at the end of World War II, US officials celebrated the Middle East as a ‘stupendous source of strategic power’ and an immense ‘material … 10 $1.00