Israel has nothing to
offer!
FP 22. Dez. 2013

Haaretz Nov. 25, 2013

Oil and the soul of the nation
By Yitzhak Laor

Israel has nothing to offer except its apocalyptic arsenal, but even that has no strategic value without the Americans - and their interest is in oil.

Excerpts:
Yes, one can burn up a Gaza police officers during roll call, wipe out a neighborhood in Beirut or a village in southern Lebanon, strike children in the West Bank, protect the settlers and jabber about “deterrence.” Not much more than that.

Even the sewing of boots for the Israel Defense Forces isn’t an Israeli matter. During these decades, superpowers have fallen and risen, new economies have risen up, and the global balance of power has shifted. Israel has remained stuck along one axis - to increase the size of the army. And the greater its military power, the less its independence.

If the United States and the West need access to the Iranian market; if indeed the United States is trying to cut its major losses in the current phase of its imperialism, the one that began with the Gulf war in 1991; if France is truly trying to make something out of the leavings of the United States, what does all that have to do with Israel, which has nothing to offer except its apocalyptic arsenal? Nothing. The arsenal has no strategic value without the Americans.

Full article:
Middle Eastern oil is important. It gave us the Balfour Declaration, the oil refineries, the Americans, the expression “the only democracy in the Middle East,” instead of, say, “oil defense installation.” It is oil the American economy needs, or the oil which gives it control over competing economies that need that oil. The story of Israel’s growth parallels the Western takeover of the region.

For decades Israel has made one effort: to take advantage of American interests in order to become a military power. The most important thing was to obtain more and more weapons. The weapons sparked an arms race, which benefitted a segment of the American economy, through huge government contracts from. That’s the economy known as the west coast economy: high-tech, missiles, aircraft. But the larger and fatter our military grew, the smaller became Israel’s room to maneuver. Yes, one can burn up a Gaza police officers during roll call, wipe out a neighborhood in Beirut or a village in southern Lebanon, strike children in the West Bank, protect the settlers and jabber about “deterrence.” Not much more than that.

In recent decades Israel has become part of American control of the region. Israel may talk - threaten, that is - as much as it likes especially if that furthers U.S. policy. It could even launch an attack - with permission only. True, from time to time, Likud MK Danny Danon says something completely independent at a Saturday morning community center panel discussion in a suburban town, but in principle, the Americans pay and make the decisions. Even the sewing of boots for the Israel Defense Forces isn’t an Israeli matter. During these decades, superpowers have fallen and risen, new economies have risen up, and the global balance of power has shifted. Israel has remained stuck along one axis - to increase the size of the army. And the greater its military power, the less its independence.

If the United States and the West need access to the Iranian market; if indeed the United States is trying to cut its major losses in the current phase of its imperialism, the one that began with the Gulf war in 1991; if France is truly trying to make something out of the leavings of the United States, what does all that have to do with Israel, which has nothing to offer except its apocalyptic arsenal? Nothing. The arsenal has no strategic value without the Americans.

For years, people here would compliment Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as if he had “managed to put the issue of the Iranian nuclear program on the world’s agenda.” If he hadn’t drawn a picture of a bomb in the United Nations, if he hadn’t threatened war and if he hadn’t met and phoned and run around, there would have been no sanctions. With the help of this interpretation, Israel’s military might seemed like a kind of sledgehammer wielded by Netanyahu. Everyone agreed that the apocalypse was on the way, and consensus emerged around his position. Since no politician in the Knesset opposition had anything to say about the “Iranian nuclear program," none now have a real position on our shaky international standing.

Now that one agreement has been signed the path is paved to a new era in the region’s history. Reporters are being dispatched to Geneva and Moscow to stand outside, shivering in the cold, waiting to broadcast, after the commercials and after the sex news. Netanyahu is once again being depicted, by the same pundits, as “provoking” the president of the United States. Some go so far as to dare say that he’s acting like the spokesman for the Republicans. And that is the same misunderstanding.

The huge military assistance Israel receives - sums unparalleled in history - has turned it into a factor in American politics, which wants no more war. That is clear. Netanyahu can interfere in policy over there just as the captains of industry already do. Netanyahu’s speeches have limited PR value. While he speaks in the name of the Holocaust victims, he also speaks in the name of the only democracy in the Middle East, the only country in the world whose entire media, in the twilight of the gods, is busy with the sexual escapades of a singer and his father, and all the people, the collective that went from Mount Sinai to Channel 2, is salivating, sighing and enjoying itself.
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