Israel’s Sacred Terrorism
Last night I finally read Livia Rokach’s Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, a presentation of excerpts from Moshe Sharett’s diaries. The slim 64-page booklet first published in 1980 has been sitting on my bookshelves alongside many others I haven’t yet gotten to. I’m sorry I didn’t read this one years ago, since it makes such an effective case against so many assumptions held by supporters of Israeli policy. Although I was aware of this issue’s broad claims, many of the details were completely new to me.
Rokach was the daughter of Israel Rokach, Israel’s Interior Minister in the 1950s when Moshe Sharett was Foreign Minister and, for two years after Ben Gurion’s temporary strategic retirement, Prime Minister. Sharett was a moderate Zionist, which meant, as Livia Rokach makes clear, that he too sought Israeli expansion and dominance but opposed the methods used by the more powerful Ben Gurion. As Sharett says in one typical 1955 excerpt,
I have been meditating on the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and on the many clashes we have provoked which cost us so much blood, and on the violations of the law by our men - all of which brought grave disasters and determined the whole course of events and contributed to the security crisis.
Looking back at this period in 1961, Sharett writes:
All this must bring about revulsion in the sense of justice and honesty in public opinion; it must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been established and accepted by contemporary society.
Rokach provides details and context along with many excerpts. Sharett’s son said they were fair representations of the eight volumes of diaries published in Hebrew. Uri Avneri wrote about this when the book came out, in an article published as the book’s final Appendix:
Livia Rokach did clean work. All her quotations are real. She did not ever take them out of context, nor did she quote them in a way that contradicts the intention of the diary writer. To any person who is familiar with Israeli propaganda, such quotations may have a stunning effect . . .
He added this:
The Israeli reader who read the excerpts from Sharett’s diary which were serialized in Maariv, or even the eight volumes of the diary themselves cannot be shocked by these revelations, in spite of their severity. However, the impact of such a publication abroad is bound to be sharper. Indeed, the lack of legal intervention by the Israeli Foreign Office prevented a wide spread dissemination of the booklet [because it minimized publicity]. The Arab-American organization that published the booklet does not have the means required to disseminate it widely, especially when faced with the conspiracy of silence imposed by the pro-Israel American media ….
Avneri was right that the book would not be disseminated widely, though it’s now available online and cited by more recent work as evidence of Israel’s false policy justifications. Yet those who support Israel are unlikely to come across it. If they do, and if they are open to absorbing new material that violates their assumptions, this book should cause a great deal of welcome discomfort.
Rokach’s introductory paragraphs could have been written today. I’m excerpting them at length because I think they’re so significant:
POPULAR SUPPORT of Israel over the last quarter of a century has been based on a number of myths, the most persistent of which has been the myth of lsrael’s security. Implying the permanent existence of grave threats to the survival of Jewish society in Palestine, this myth has been carefully cultivated to evoke anxious images in public opinion to permit, and even encourage, the use of large amounts of public funds to sustain Israel militarily and economically. “Israel’s security” is the official argument with which not only Israel but also the U.S. denies the right of self-determination in their own country to the Palestinian people. For the past three decades it has been accepted as a legitimate explanation for lsrael’s violation of international resolutions calling for the return of the Palestinian people to their homes. Over the past thirteen years Israel has been allowed to evoke its security to justify its refusal to retreat from the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Security is still the pretext given by successive Israeli governments for widespread massacres of civilian populations in Lebanon, for expropriations of Arab lands, for the establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, for deportations, and for arbitrary detentions of political prisoners. …..
… The following pages present extracts from Sharett’s diary demonstrating the following points:
1. The Israeli political /military establishment never seriously believed in an Arab threat to the existence of Israel. On the contrary, it sought and applied every means to exacerbate the dilemma of the Arab regimes after the 1948 war. … In other words, the Arab threat was an Israeli-invented myth which for internal and inter-Arab reasons the Arab regimes could not completely deny, though they constantly feared Israeli preparations for a new war.2. The Israeli political/military establishment aimed at pushing the Arab states into military confrontations which the Israeli leaders were invariably certain of winning. The goal of these confrontations was to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming the Zionist state into the major power in the Middle East.
3. In order to achieve this strategic purpose the following tactics were used:
a) Large- and small-scale military operations aimed at civilian populations across the armistice lines, especially in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, then respectively under the control of Jordan and Egypt. …..
b) Military operations against Arab military installations in border areas to undermine the morale of the armies and intensify the regimes’ destabilization from inside their military structures.
c) Covert terrorist operations in depth inside the Arab world, used for both espionage and to create fear, tension and instability.
4. lsrael’s achievement of its strategic purpose was to be realized through the following means:
a) New territorial conquests through war. Although the 1949-50 armistice agreements assigned to Israel a territory one-third larger than had the UN partition plan, the Israeli leadership was still not satisfied with the size of the state, the borders of which it had committed itself to respect on the international level. It sought to recover at least the borders of mandate Palestine….
b) Political as well as military efforts to bring about the liquidation of all Arab and Palestinian claims to Palestine through the dispersion of the Palestinian refugees of the 1947-49 war to faraway parts of the Arab world as well as outside the Arab world.
c) Subversive operations designed to dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement, and create puppet regimes which would gravitate to the regional Israeli power.
….
The occupation by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 has been described, and is still widely understood today, as an Israeli defensive action in the face of Arab threats. Sharett’s Diary offers unequivocable evidence that the occupation of Gaza and also of the West Bank was part of lsrael’s plans since the early fifties. American Zionist leaders were informed about these plans in 1954, In 1955, Jewish and Arab lives were sacrificed in a series of provocative attacks undertaken to create a pretext for the occupation of Jordanian territory. The chief obstacle postponing this occupation was Britain’s residual presence in Jordan upholding the Hashemite throne….
This short book makes a devastating case against the heart of pro-Israel propaganda. Unlike more recent histories that expose many of the same details with the benefit of newly discovered documents and accounts, the diary written by Israel’s Prime Minister during the 1950s can’t be tarnished with the “revisionist history” label.
That I only just now read it, and have never heard it discussed, makes it look like Avneri was right after all.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Hello,
We are writing to inform you about a book related to what is happening now in the Middle East released by Olive Grove Books entitled THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY. This book takes place in Beirut.
Because the region of Palestine and the repercussions it holds for peace in the Middle East between the PLO and Israel are critically important, the issues discussed via this spy-thriller makes it interesting and informative so that people all over the world can understand exactly how both sides think and how that thinking has led to continual violence in the Middle East.
If these issues had been understood and discussed 18 years ago, perhaps two wars in the Persian Gulf, the Sept. 11th catastrophe and this new Beirut War would not have happened.
That aside, it is never too late for peace.
With your consideration, we at Olive Grove Books hope you give THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY its rightful place in history and on your web site and store book shelves.
It is a book, which has come of age, and is so timely that it is a must read for everyone who wants to understand what is going on in the Middle East.
With appreciation and gratitude,
Sincerely, from the publisher,
THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY
Robert Spirko, author
ISBN: 0-9752508-0-9
Olive Grove Publishers
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MENTOR, Ohio – THE PALESTINE CONSPIRACY, a genre spy-thriller by Robert Spirko, was fourth on the best-seller list at Atlasbooks, Inc., a national book distributor.
“It is time for the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the Camp David Peace Talks, resume where they left off and “freeze in place” the already-agreed-upon negotiating points,” Spirko says.
“The Iraq Study Group should make this recommendation a top priority before trying to put-in-place a new strategy for Iraq – mainly because ramifications of a peace agreement between both sides will resonate deeply throughout the Muslim world in the way Jews and Muslims interact toward each other. It could have a profound ripple effect including how the United States is perceived by Islamists.” he emphasizes.
“I have communicated that first step to the James Baker III and Lee Hamilton study group. It is important that both sides in the Middle East region are willing to come to their senses,” Spirko reiterates.
He uses the following analogy for peace. “The Camp David accords have precedent and continuity through previous agreements. It’s like a marriage where both spouses in an argument storm away mad. They don’t divorce and then try to resume their relationship; rather, they come back together, settle their differences, and resume the marriage where they left off. It must be the same for the Middle East Peace talks.”
Spirko’s book predicted terrorism against the United States & Israel in his book which takes place in Lebanon. It is eerily similar to the Beirut War which took place last summer between Hezbollah and Israel.
Spirko says if these issues had been understood and discussed 18 years ago, perhaps two wars in the Persian Gulf, the Sept. 11th catastrophe and the new Beirut War would not have happened.
“That aside,” he says, “It is never too late for peace.”
[details removed]
January 30th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
To think that if discussions were held 18 years ago, the world could have resolved the issues and ended the Middle East wars, is to completely ignore the Religious War that is actually occurring. Extremist Muslims sincerely believe it is time for them to cleanse the earth of “unbelievers.” They define “unbelievers” or “infidels” as everyone who does not practise Islam as they do–which includes many of their fellow Muslims!
To avoid the “gross darkness” of a nuclear winter–which was precisely described by ancient Hebrew Prophets–Jews, Christians and Muslims must gain an enlarged understanding of the God they all worship. The only way to accomplish that is for them to listen to the teachings of all fhe Proohets, from Abraham through Muhammad. Only then could they “turn their hearts to each other,” as another Hebrew Prophet said we must, if we are to avoid the “gross darkness.”
But, to be sure, it seems too absurd to expect “believers” to seek and embrace that “enlarged understanding” of God, since each religion’s clergy assures their flock that they alone know the “truth” as best man can know it. And the “truth,” as each clergy sees it, is only as they interpret their own religion’s Scriptures. So, politicans cannot resolve the religious arguments; the clergies won’t; and all we have left is for individuals to seek understanding on their own–an enlarged understanding that can only be gained through the combined teachings of the Prophets, themselves. To learn more about it, I invite you to visit my blog.