Michael Parenti — A few words on Palestine
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Here is a short compilation of Parenti’s writings throughout his published books and articles, along with a clip found on @yellowparenti, regarding Palestine and the settler-colonial and genocidal state of Israel and its occupation forces. This was proposed by a fan of our platform. We plan on extending this text should more clips emerge of Parenti’s lectures pertinent to the subject proposed by people new to his lectures found online (and those not yet digitalised). It’s been years of watching and rewatching these lectures many times, and we’re happy to accept any collaboration that is proposed.
Throughout the 1984 press coverage of the Lebanon crisis, the press incessantly referred to the “Soviet-made” antiaircraft missiles and other arms possessed by the Syrians and Lebanese. But at no time were the Israeli arms described as “US-made” — which they were. The impression was that the Soviets were somehow the instigators in what was actually an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
[…] Israeli authorities rounded up hundreds of Palestinian political leaders, administrators, teachers, journalists, intellectuals, and anyone else who might provide leadership to the Palestinian community, holding them in “administrative detention” for years on end, without charges. In effect, they were hostages to Israeli rule. But throughout 1991, the US news media invariably referred to them as “prisoners,” not hostages. Arab resistance groups, however, had no prisoners; they held only “hostages.” As of 1992, Israel held fifty-three UN personnel as hostages; almost all were Arab employees for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The US media never labeled them as hostages. [1]
- Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media, St. Martin’s Press Vintage (1986/2013), pp. 231–232
In a number of countries, such as South Africa, Zaire, Guatemala, Chile, Angola, and Haiti, where US policymakers have not always felt politically comfortable about committing American military personnel in noticeable numbers, Israel has been willing to do the dirty work in return for large sums of US aid and other special considerations. Likewise in countries such as Nicaragua (with the contras), El Salvador, Namibia, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Bolivia, Israeli military personnel have worked as advisors in counterinsurgency. According to one Israeli writer: “Consider any third-world area that has been a trouble spot in the past 10 years and you will discover Israeli officers and weapons implicated in the conflict — supporting American interests and helping in what they call ‘the defense of the West.’” [2]
- The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race, St. Martin’s Press (1989), pp. 55
The Soldier (1982). The Soviet KGB threatens to blow up half the western world’s petroleum supply with a nuclear device it planted in Saudi Arabia — unless the Israelis evacuate the West Bank in forty-eight hours. The Israelis refuse to budge. This upsets the U.S. president, who then decides to nuke the West Bank in order to vacate it and thereby save Western oil. The KGB are everywhere, having penetrated the highest reaches of the CIA itself. Luckily, a CIA counterterrorist team, who look like Young Republicans, side with the Israelis and refuse to knuckle under. They go in and kick Russkie ass. Moral of the story: Don’t be led around by the spineless politicians in Washington. (Better to be led around by the tough ones in Jerusalem and Langley, Virginia.) Give the Soviet aggressors the only thing they understand: a bullet in the belly and a gun butt in the face.
- Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment, St. Martin’s Press (1992), pp. 46
More recently, during the late 1960s into the 1970s, Israeli military officers were running drug shipments to Egypt, specifically targeting the Egyptian army. As one colonel said, “It allowed us to control and practically avoid drug smuggling into Israel, and increase the use of drugs within the Egyptian army.” Egyptian military officials admitted that during that period, drug consumption in the ranks rose by 50 percent {Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1997).
- America Beseiged, City Lights Books (1998) pp. 133–134
In July 1993, the Israelis launched a saturation shelling of southern Lebanon, turning some three hundred thousand Muslims into refugees, in what had every appearance of being a policy of depopulation or “ethnic cleansing.”
- To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso (2000), pp. 12
By the same token we are not being anti-Semitic if we criticize the Israeli government for the incursions and settlements in the occupied territories and for mistreatment of Palestinians. Some of the most outspoken critics of Israeli policy are themselves Israelis in Israel or Jewish-Americans in the United States who — contrary to the facile psychologists charge made against them — are not “self-hating Jews.” In fact, most happen to be rightly proud of their Jewish heritage. Likewise, we are not showing hatred for Mexico, Italy, Poland, China, or any nation, nationality, or ethnic group if we denounce the particular policies of the Mexican, Italian, Polish, or Chinese governments.
- Superpatriotism, City Lights Books (2004), pp. 11
ISRAEL FIRST
The neoconservative officials in the Bush Jr. administration — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Lewis Libby, Abram Shulsky, and others — were strong proponents of a militaristic and expansionist strain of Zionism linked closely to the right-wing Likud Party of Israel. With impressive cohesion these “neocons” played a determinant role in shaping U.S. Middle East policy. [3] In the early 1980s Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing classified documents to Israel. Instead of being charged with espionage, Feith temporarily lost his security clearance and Wolfowitz was untouched. The two continued to enjoy ascendant careers, becoming second and third in command at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld.
For these right-wing Zionists, the war against Iraq was part of a larger campaign to serve the greater good of Israel. Saddam Hussein was Israel’s most consistent adversary in the Middle East, providing much political support to the Palestinian resistance. The neocons had been pushing for war with Iraq well before 9/11, assisted by the wellfinanced and powerful Israeli lobby, as well as by prominent members of Congress from both parties who obligingly treated U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East as inseparable. The Zionist neocons provided alarming reports about the threat to the United States posed by Saddam because of his weapons of mass destruction. At that same time, reports by both the CIA and the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) registered strong skepticism about the existence of such weapons in Iraq. [4]
The neocon goal has been Israeli expansion into all Palestinian territories and the emergence of Israel as the unchallengeable, perfectly secure, supreme power in the region.
This could best be accomplished by undoing the economies of pro-Palestinian states including Syria, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia. A most important step in that direction was the destruction of Iraq as a nation, including its military, civil service, police, universities, hospitals, utilities, professional class, and entire infrastructure, an Iraq torn with sectarian strife and left in shambles. [5]
- Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader, City Lights Books (2007) pp. 167–168
You see when the US planes come in, that’s called a raid. That’s not called a terrorist attack. People down there see it as a terrorist attack. It’s the same thing in Palestine. The Palestinians are terrorists because they use cars, and machine guns, and whatever else, and the Israelis are retaliating with jets and tanks. That’s seen as retaliation, that’s not seen as a terror attack, but it’s using terror too.
- Lecture, Globalization and Terrorism (2009)
Iran’s Islamic Republic has other features that did not sit well with the western imperialists. Iran was — and still is — a “dangerously” independent nation, unwilling to become a satellite to the U.S. global empire, unlike more compliant countries. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran, with boundless audacity, gave every impression of wanting to use its land, labor, markets, and capital as it saw fit. Like Iraq — and Libya and Syria — Iran was committing the sin of economic nationalism. And like Iraq, Iran remained unwilling to establish cozy relations with Israel.
But this isn’t what we ordinary Americans are told. When talking to us, a different tact is taken by U.S. opinion-makers and policymakers. To strike enough fear into the public, our leaders tell us that, like Iraq, Iran “might” develop weapons of mass destruction. And like Iraq, Iran is lead by people who hate America and want to destroy us and Israel. And like Iraq, Iran “might” develop into a regional power leading other nations in the Middle East down the “Hate America” path. So our leaders conclude for us: it might be necessary to destroy Iran in an all-out aerial war.
- Article, Iran and Everything Else, michael-parenti.org (2012)
Still another reason for régime change in Iraq was concern for Israel. The neoconservative officials in the Bush Jr. administration — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, and others — were strong proponents of an expansionist strain of Zionism linked closely to the right-wing Likud Party of Israel. Assisted by the powerfully financed Israeli lobby, they pushed for war with Iraq well before the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. [6]
Saddam Hussein was Israel’s most consistent adversary in the Middle East, providing political and financial support to the Palestinian resistance.
- The Face of Imperialism, Routlege (2016) pp. 108–109
The country that receives the bulk of US foreign aid is Israel, a nation that defies classification as either satellite or enemy of the US imperium. Israel imposes a continually repressive policy of land incursions and colonization upon the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank without incurring any restraints from Washington. It is said that in the Middle East, Israel plays a subimperialism role to the United States, acting as a “stabilizing force,” a curb against revolutionary upheaval in the region. Debate continues among political writers as to whether it is the US or Israel that has the upper hand on Middle East policy. To be sure, with its well-financed Zionist lobbies and big-moneyed contributions to both Republicans and Democrats — unmatched by anything the anti-Zionists can muster — Israel exercises a most impressive influence over US policy in the region, an influence that extends into Congress, the State Department, and the White House itself, regardless of which party is in charge. [7]
- Ibid., pp. 126
Compilation by Joel Ruggi
Administrative Editor
Unsettling Empire
Bibliography
[1] Nation, December 23, 1991, pp. 802.
[2] Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Israel’s Global Ambitions,” New York Times, January 6, 1983; also, Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America (Boston: South End Press, 1987); Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986).
[3] James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press and Fernwood Books, 2006), 61–62 and passim.
[4] Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States, 21 and passim.
[5] See Yahya Sadowski, “No War for Whose Oil?” Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2003; Patrick Seale, “A Costly Friendship,” Nation, 21 July 2003, and Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States.
[6] Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3249.htm; James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press and Fernwood Books, 2006), 61–62 and passim; Patrick Seale, “A Costly Friendship,” Nation, 21 July 2003.
[7] James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006).
