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Editorial: The Problem with Israel
Jeff Halper
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
23 Nov 06
Let's be honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah or the Iranians or the entire Muslim world. It's us, the Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single greatest cause of instability, extremism and violence in our region, is perhaps the simplest conflict in the world to resolve. For almost 20 years, since the PLO's recognition of Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (the "Green Line" separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza), every Palestinian leader, backed by large majorities of the Palestinian population, has presented Israel with a most generous offer: A Jewish state on 78% of Israel/Palestine in return for a Palestinian state on just 22% - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In fact, this is a proposition supported by a large majority of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. As reported in Ha'aretz (January 18, 2005):
Some 63 percent of the Palestinians support the proposal that after the establishment of the state of Palestine and a solution to all the outstanding issues - including the refugees and Jerusalem - a declaration will be issued recognizing the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state as the state of the Palestinian people...On the Israeli side, 70 percent supported the proposal for mutual recognition.
And if Taba and the Geneva Initiative are indicators, the Palestinians are even willing to "swap" some of the richest and most strategic land around Jerusalem and up through Modi'in for barren tracts of the Negev.
And what about the refugees, supposedly the hardest issue of all to tackle? It's true that the Palestinians want their right of return acknowledged. After all, it is their right under international law. They also want Israel to acknowledge its role in driving the refugees from the country in order that a healing process may begin (I don't have to remind anyone how important it is for us Jews that our suffering be acknowledged). But they have said repeatedly that when it comes to addressing the actual issue, a package of resettlement in Israel and the Palestinian state, plus compensation for those wishing to remain in the Arab countries, plus the possibility of resettlement in Canada, Australia and other countries would create solutions acceptable to all parties. Khalil Shkaki, a Palestinian sociologist who conducted an extensive survey among the refugees, estimates that only about 10%, mainly the aged, would choose to settle in Israel, a number (about 400,000) Israel could easily digest.
With an end to the Occupation and a win-win political arrangement that would satisfy the fundamental needs of both peoples, the Palestinians could make what would be perhaps the most significant contribution of all to peace and stability in the Middle East. Weak as they are, the Palestinians possess one source of tremendous power, one critical trump card: They are the gatekeepers to the Middle East. For the Palestinian conflict is emblematic in the Muslim world. It encapsulates the "clash of civilizations" from the Muslim point of view. Once the Palestinians signal the wider Arab and Muslim worlds that a political accommodation has been achieved that is acceptable to them, and that now is the time to normalize relations with Israel, it will significantly undercut the forces of fundamentalism, militarism and reaction, giving breathing space to those progressive voices that cannot be heard today - including those in Israel. Israel, of course, would also have to resolve the issue of the Golan Heights, which Syria has been asking it to do for years. Despite the neocon rhetoric to the contrary, anyone familiar with the Middle East knows that such a dynamic is not only possible but would progress at a surprisingly rapid pace.
The problem is Israel in both its pre- and post-state forms, which for the past 100 years has steadfastly refused to recognize the national existence and rights of self-determination of the Palestinian people. Time and again it has said "no" to any possibility of genuine peace making, and in the clearest of terms. The latest example is the Convergence Plan (or Realignment) of Ehud Olmert, which seeks to end the conflict forever by imposing Israeli control over a "sovereign" Palestinian pseudo-state. "Israel will maintain control over the security zones, the Jewish settlement blocs, and those places which have supreme national importance to the Jewish people, first and foremost a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty," Olmert declared at the January 2006 Herzliya Conference. "We will not allow the entry of Palestinian refugees into the State of Israel." Olmert's plan, which he had promised to implement just as soon as Hamas and Hezbollah were dispensed with, would have perpetuated Israeli control over the Occupied Territories. It could not possibly have given rise to a viable Palestinian state. While the "Separation Barrier," Israel's demographic border to the east, takes only 10-15% of the West Bank, it incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs, carves the West Bank into small, disconnected, impoverished "cantons" (Sharon's word), removes from the Palestinians their richest agricultural land and one of the major sources of water. It also creates a "greater" Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic, cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then sandwiches the Palestinians between the Wall/border and yet another "security" border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. Israel would retain control of all the resources necessary for a viable Palestinian state, and for good measure Israel would appropriate the Palestinians' airspace, their communications sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state to conduct its own foreign policy.
This plan is obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians - a fact Olmert knows full well - so it must be imposed unilaterally, with American assistance. But who cares? We refused to talk genuinely with Arafat, refused to speak at all with Abu Mazen and currently boycott entirely the elected Hamas government, arresting or assassinating those associated with it. And if "Convergence" doesn't fly this time around, well, maintaining the status quo while building settlements has been an effective policy for the past four decades and can be extended indefinitely. True, Israel has descended into blind, pointless violence - the Lebanon War of 2006 and, as this is being written, an increasingly violent assault on Gaza. But the Israeli public has accepted Barak's line that there is no "partner for peace." So if there is any discontent among the voters, they are more likely to throw out the "bleeding heart" liberal left and bring in the right with its failed doctrine of military-based security.
Why? If Israelis truly crave peace and security - "the right to be normal," as Olmert put it recently - then why haven't they grabbed, or at least explored, each and every opportunity for resolving the conflict? Why do they continually elect governments that aggressively pursue settlement expansion and military confrontation with the Palestinians and Israel's neighbors even though they want to get the albatross of occupation off their necks? Why, if most Israelis truly yearn to "separate" from the Palestinians, do they offer the Palestinians so little that separation is simply not an option, even if the Palestinians are willing to make major concessions? "The files of the Israeli Foreign Ministry," writes the Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall (2001:49), "burst at the seams with evidence of Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on." To take just a few examples of opportunities deliberately rejected:
- In the spring and summer of 1949, Israel and the Arab states met under the auspices of the UN's Palestine Conciliation Committee (PCC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Israel did not want to make any territorial concessions or take back 100,000 of the 700,000 refugees demanded by the Arabs. As much as anything else, however, was Ben Gurion's observation in a cabinet meeting that the Israeli public was "drunk with victory" and in no mood for concessions, "maximal or minimal," according to Israeli negotiator Elias Sasson.
- In 1949 Syria's leader Husni Zaim openly declared his readiness to be the first Arab leader to conclude a peace treaty with Israel - as well as to resettle half the Palestinian refugees in Syria. He repeatedly offered to meet with Ben Gurion, who steadfastly refused. In the end only an armistice agreement was signed.
- King Abdullah of Jordan engaged in two years of negotiations with Israel but was never able to make a meaningful breakthrough on any major matter before his assassination. His offer to meet with Ben Gurion was also refused. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett commented tellingly: "Transjordan said - we are ready for peace immediately. We said - of course, we too want peace, but we cannot run, we have to walk." Three weeks before his assassination, King Abdullah said: "I could justify a peace by pointing to concessions made by the Jews. But without any concessions from them, I am defeated before I even start."
- In 1952-53 extensive negotiations were held with the Syrian government of Adib Shishakli, a pro-American leader who was eager for accommodation with Israel. Those talks failed because Israel insisted on exclusive control of the Sea of Galilee, Lake Huleh and the Jordan River.
- Nasser's repeated offers to talk peace with Ben Gurion, beginning soon after the 1952 Revolution, finally ended with the refusal of Ben Gurion's successor, Moshe Sharett, to continue the process and a devastating Israeli attack (led by Ariel Sharon) on an Egyptian military base in Gaza.
- In general, Israel's post-war inflexibility was due to its success in negotiating the armistice agreements, which left it in a politically, territorially and militarily superior position. "The renewed threat of war had been pushed back," writes Israeli historian Benny Morris in his book Righteous Victims. "So why strain to make a peace involving major territorial concessions?" In a cable to Sharett, Ben Gurion stated flatly what would become Israel's long-term policy, essentially valid until today: "Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve an inch of Israel's land...We are ready for peace in exchange for peace." ln July, 1949, he told a visiting American journalist, "I am not in a hurry and I can wait ten years. We are under no pressure whatsoever." Nonetheless, this period saw the emergence of the image of the Arab leaders as intractable enemies, curried so carefully by Israel and representing such a powerful part of the Israeli framing. Morris (1999: 268) summarizes it succinctly and bluntly:
For decades Ben-Gurion, and successive administrations after his, lied to the Israeli public about the post-1948 peace overtures and about Arab interest in a deal. The Arab leaders (with the possible exception of Abdullah) were presented, one and all, as a recalcitrant collection of warmongers, hell-bent on Israel's destruction. The recent opening of the Israeli archive offers a far more complex picture.
- In late 1965 Abdel Hakim Amer, the vice-president and deputy commander of the Egyptian army invited the head of the Mossad, Meir Amit, to come to Cairo. The visit was vetoed after stiff opposition from Isser Harel, Eshkol's intelligence advisor. Could the 1967 war have been avoided? We'll never know.
- Immediately after the 1967 war, Israel sent out feelers for an accommodation with both the Palestinians of the West Bank and with Jordan. The Palestinians were willing to enter into discussion over peace, but only if that meant an independent Palestinian state, an option Israel never even entertained. The Jordanians were also ready, but only if they received full control over the West Bank and, in particular, East Jerusalem and its holy places. King Hussein even held meetings with Israeli officials but Israel's refusal to contemplate a full return of the territories scuttled the process. The annexation of a "greater" Jerusalem area and immediate program of settlement construction foreclosed any chance for a full peace.
- In 1971 Sadat sent a letter to the UN Jarring Commission expressing Egypt's willingness to enter into a peace agreement with Israel. Israeli acceptance could have prevented the 1973 war. After the war Golda Meir summarily dismissed Sadat's renewed overtures of peace talks.
- Israel ignored numerous feelers put out by Arafat and other Palestinian leaders in the early 1970s expressing a readiness to discuss peace with Israel.
- Sadat's attempts in 1978 to resolve the Palestine issue as a part of the Israel-Egypt peace process that were rebuffed by Begin who refused to consider anything beyond Palestinian "autonomy."
- In 1988 in Algiers, as part of its declaration of Palestinian independence, the PLO recognized Israel within the Green Line and expressed a willingness to enter into discussions.
- In 1993, at the start of the Oslo process, Arafat and the PLO reiterated in writing their recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders (again, on 78% of historic Palestine). Although they recognized Israel as a "legitimate" state in the Middle East, Israel did not reciprocate. The Rabin government did not recognize the Palestinians' national right of self-determination, but was only willing to recognize the Palestinians as a negotiating partner. Not in Oslo nor subsequently has Israel ever agreed to relinquish the territory it conquered in 1967 in favor of a Palestinian state despite this being the position of the UN (Resolution 242), the international community (including, until Bush, the Americans), and since 1988, the Palestinians.
- Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of all was the undermining by successive Labor and Likud governments of any viable Palestinian state by doubling Israel's settler population during the seven years of the Oslo "peace process" (1993-2000), thus effectively eliminating the two-state solution.
- In late 1995, Yossi Beilin, a key member of the Oslo negotiating team, presented Rabin with the "Stockholm document" (negotiated with Abu Mazen's team) for resolving the conflict. So promising was this agreements that Abu Mazen had tears in his eyes when he signed off on it. Rabin was assassinated a few days later and his successor, Shimon Peres, turned it down flat.
- Israel's dismissal of Syrian readiness to negotiate peace, repeated frequently until this day, if Israel will make concessions on the occupied Golan Heights.
- Sharon's complete disregard for the Arab League's 2002 offer of recognition, peace and regional integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation.
- Sharon's disqualification of Arafat, by far the most congenial and cooperative partner Israel ever had, and the last Palestinian leader who could "deliver," and his subsequent boycott of Abu Mazen.
- Olmert declared "irrelevant" the Prisoners' Document in which all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, agreed on a political program seeking a two-state solution - followed by attempts to destroy the democratically-elected government of Hamas by force; and on until this day when
- In September and October 2006 Bashar Assad made repeated overtures for peace with Israel, declaring in public: "I am ready for an immediate peace with Israel, with which we want to live in peace." On the day of Assad's first statement to that regard, Prime Minister Olmert declared, "We will never leave the Golan Heights," accused Syria of "harboring terrorists" and, together with his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, announced that "conditions are not ripe for peace with Syria."
To all this we can add the unnecessary wars, more limited conflicts and the bloody attacks that served mainly to bolster Israel's position, directly or indirectly, in its attempt to extend its control over the entire land west of the Jordan: The systematic killing between 1948-1956 of 3000-5000 "infiltrators," Palestinian refugees, mainly unarmed, who sought mainly to return to their homes, to till their fields or to recover lost property; the 1956 war with Egypt, fought partly in order to prevent the reemergence onto the international agenda of the "Palestine Problem," as well as to strengthen Israel militarily, territorially and diplomatically; military operations against Palestinian civilians beginning with the infamous killings in Sharafat, Beit Jala and most notoriously Qibia, led by Sharon's Unit 101. These operations continue in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon until this day, mainly for purposes of collective punishment and "pacification." Others include the campaign, decades old, of systematically liquidating any effective Palestinian leader; the three wars in Lebanon (Operation Litani in 1978, Operation Peace for the Galilee in 1982 and the war of 2006); and more.
Lurking behind all these military actions, be they major wars or "targeted assassinations," is the consistent and steadfast Israeli refusal (in fact extending back to the pre-Zionist days of the 1880s) to deal directly and seriously with the Palestinians. Israel's strategy until today is to bypass and encircle them, making deals with governments that isolate and, unsuccessfully so far, neutralize the Palestinians as players. This was most tellingly shown in the Madrid peace talks, when Israel only allowed Palestinian participation as part of the Jordanian delegation. But it includes the Oslo "peace process" as well. While Israel insisted on a letter from Arafat explicitly recognizing Israel as a "legitimate construct" in the Middle East, and later demanded a specific statement recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (both of which it got), no Israeli government ever recognized the collective rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Rabin was forthright as to the reason: If Israel recognizes the Palestinians' right to self-determination, it means that a Palestinian state must by definition emerge - and Israel did not want to promise that (Savir 1998:47). So except for vague pronouncements about not wanting to rule over another people and "our hand outstretched in peace," Israel has never allowed the framework for genuine negotiations. The Palestinians must be taken into account, they may be asked to react to one or another of our proposals, but they are certainly not equal partners with claims to the country rivaling ours. Israel's fierce response to the eruption of the second Intifada, when it shot more than a million rounds, including missiles, into civilian centers in the West Bank and Gaza despite the complete lack of shooting from the Palestinian side during the Intifada's first five days, can only be explained as punishing them for rejecting what Barak tried to impose on them at Camp David, disabusing them of the notion that are equals in deciding the future of "our" country. We will beat them, Sharon used to say frequently, "until they get 'the message'." And what is the "message"? That this is our country and only we Israeli Jews have the prerogative of deciding whether and how we wish to divide it.
Non-Constraining Conflict Management
The irrelevance of the Palestinians to Israeli policy-makers is merely a localized expression of an overall assumption that has determined Israeli policy towards the Arabs since the founding of the state. Israel, Prime Ministers from Ben Gurion to Olmert have asserted, is simply too strong for the Arabs to ignore. We therefore cannot make peace too soon. Once we get everything we want, the Arabs will still be willing to sue for peace with us. The answer, then, to the apparent contradiction of why Israel claims it desires peace and security and yet pursues policies of conflict and expansion has four parts.
(1) Territory and hegemony trump peace. As Ben Gurion disclosed years ago, Israel's geo-political goals take precedence over peace with any Arab country. Since a state of non-conflict is even better than peace (Israel has such a relationship with Syria, with whom it hasn't fought for 34 years, and is thereby able to avoid the compromises associated with peace that might threaten its occupation of the Golan Heights), Israel makes "peace" only with countries that acquiescence to its expansionist agenda. Jordan gave up all claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem and has even ceased to actively advocate for Palestinian rights. Peace with Egypt, it is true, cost Israel the Sinai Peninsula, but it left its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank intact. Differentiating between those parts of the Arab world with which it wants an actual peace agreement, those with which it needs merely a state of non-conflict and those which it believes it can control, isolate and defeat creates a situation of great flexibility, allows Israel to employ the carrot or the stick according to its particular agenda at any particular time.
Israel can pursue this strategy today only because of the umbrella, political, military and financial, provided by the United States. This is rooted in many different sources including the influence of the organized Jewish community and the Christian fundamentalists on domestic politics and the Congress most obviously. Bipartisan and unassailable support for Israel, however, arises from Israel's place in the American arms industry and the US' defense diplomacy. Since the mid-1990s Israel has specialized in developing hi-tech components for weapons systems, and in this way it has also gained a central place in the world's arms and security industries. One could look at Israel's suppression of the Intifadas, its attempted pacification of the Occupied Territories and occasional combat with the likes of Hezbollah as valuable opportunities in almost laboratory-like conditions to develop useful weaponry and tactics. This has made it extremely valuable to the West. In fact, Israel is among the five largest exporters of arms in the world, and is poised to overtake Russia as #2 in just a few years (based on Jane's assessment, May 2, 2006). The fact that it has discrete military ties with many Muslim countries, including Iran, adds another layer of rationality to its guiding assumption that a separate peace with Arab states is achievable without major concessions to the Palestinians. If any state significantly challenges Israeli positions, Israel can pull rank as the gatekeeper to American military programs, including to some degree the US defense industry, and thus to major sources of hi-tech research and development, a formidable position indeed.
(2) A militarily defined security doctrine. Israel's concept of "security" has always been so exaggerated that it leaves no breathing space whatsoever for the Palestinians, thus eliminating any viable resolution of the conflict. This reflects, of course, its traditional reliance on overwhelming military superiority (the "qualitative edge") over the Arabs. So overwhelming is it perceived - despite its near-disaster in the 1973 war, its failure to pacify the Occupied Territories and, most recently, its failure against Hezbollah in Lebanon - that it precludes any need for accommodation or genuine negotiations, let alone meaningful concessions to the Palestinians. Several Israel scholars, including ex-military officials, have written on the preponderance of the military in formulating government policy. Ben Gurion's linking the concept of nation building with that of a nation-in-arms, writes Yigal Levy (reviewing Yoram Peri's recent book Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy), made the army an instrument for maintaining a social order that rested on keeping war a permanent fixture.
The centrality of the army depends on the centrality of war...But the moment the political leadership opted to create a 'mobilized,' disciplined and inequitable society by turning the army into the 'nation builder' and making war a constant, the politicians became dependent on the army. It was not just dependence on the army as an organization, but on military thinking. The military view of political reality has become the main anchor of Israeli statesmanship, from the victory of Ben Gurion and his allies over Moshe Sharett's more conciliatory policies in the 1950s, through the occupation as a fact of life from the 1960s, to the current preference for another war in Lebanon over the political option (Ha'aretz August 25, 2006).
Ze'ev Maoz, in an article entitled "Israel's Nonstrategy of Peace," argues that
Israel has a well-developed security doctrine [but] does not have a peace policy...Israel's history of peacemaking has been largely reactive, demonstrating a pattern of hesitancy, risk-avoidance, and gradualism that stands in stark contrast to its proactive, audacious, and trigger-happy strategic doctrine...The military is essentially the only government organization that offers policy options - typically military plans - at times of crisis. Israel's foreign ministry and diplomatic community are reduced to public relations functions, explaining why Israel is using force instead of diplomacy to deal with crisis situations (Tikkun 21(5), September 2006: 49-50).
Again, this approach to dealing with the Arabs is not recent: It is found throughout the entire history of Zionism and has been dominant in the Yishuv/Israeli leadership from the time of the Arab "riots" and the recommendations for partition from the Peel commission in 1937 until this day, with a few very brief interruptions: Sharett (1954-55), Levi Eshkol (1963-69) and, perhaps, Rabin in his Oslo phase (1992-95). Sharett labeled it the camp of the military "activists," and in 1957 described it as follows:
The activists believe that the Arabs understand only the language of force...The State of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that is it strong, and able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth. As to peace - this approach states - it is in any case doubtful; in any case very remote. If peace comes, it will come only if [the Arabs] are convinced that this country cannot be beaten....If [retaliatory] operations...rekindle the fires of hatred, that is no cause for fear for the fires will be fueled in any event (Morris, 1999: 280).
Feeling that its security is guaranteed by its military power and that a separate peace (or state of non-conflict) with each Arab state is sufficient, Israel allows itself an expanded concept of "security" that eliminates a negotiated settlement. Thus Israel defines the conflict with the Palestinians just as the US defines its War on Terror: As an us-or-them equation where "they" are fundamentally, irretrievably and permanently our enemies. It is no longer a political conflict, and thus it has no solution. Israel's security, in this view, can be guaranteed only in military terms, or until each and every one of "them" [the Palestinians] is either dead, in prison, driven out of the country or confined to a sealed enclave. This is why rational attempts to resolve the conflict based on mutual interests, identifying the sources of the conflict and negotiating solutions has proven futile all these years. Israel's guiding agenda and principles have nothing whatsoever to do with either the Palestinians or actual peace. They are rooted instead in an uncompromising project of creating a purely Jewish space in the entire Land of Israel, with closed islands of Palestinians. Even Israel's most ardent supporters - organized American Jewry, for instance - do not grasp this (Christian fundamentalists and neocons do, and its just fine with them). The claim made by these "pro-Israel" supporters and, indeed, by Israel itself, that Israel has always sought peace and has been rebuffed by Arab intransigence, is actually the opposite of the case. Again, Israel is seeking a proprietorship and regional hegemony that can only be achieved unilaterally, rendering negotiations superfluous and irrelevant. Like the Zionist ideology itself, Israel's security doctrine is self-contained, a closed circuit. That's why peace-making efforts over the years, Israeli as well as foreign, have failed miserably. If the assumption - encouraged by Israel - is that the conflict can be resolved through diplomatic means, then Israel can justly be accused of acting in bad faith. Israel and its interlocutors are essentially talking past each other.
The prominence (one is tempted to say "monopoly") of the military in political policy-making explains the mystery of why Labor in the post-Ben Gurion era chose territorial expansion over peace. Uri Savir, the head of Israel's Foreign Ministry under Rabin and Peres and a chief negotiator in the Oslo process, provides a glimpse into this dynamic in his book The Process (1998:81, 99, 207-208). After the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestinians was signed on the White House lawn in September 1993
Rabin chose a new team of negotiators. Led by Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Amnon Shahak, it was composed mostly of military officers. When the military grumbled bitterly at having been shut out of the Oslo talks, Rabin...did not reject the criticism...That Israel's approach should be dictated by the army invariably made immediate security considerations the dominant one, so that the fundamentally political process had been subordinated to short-term military needs.
In Grenada, Peres had painstakingly explained to Arafat Israel's stand on security, especially external security and the border passages. "Mr. Chairman, I'm going to give you the straight truth, without embellishment," he said...We will not compromise on the operational side of controlling the border passages [to Jordan and Egypt]. We're concerned about the smuggling of weapons. Ten pistols can make for many victims," he stressed. "This is absolutely vital to our security."
Arafat, who translated this straight talk into a vision of Palestinians caged in on all sides, replied: "I cannot go for a Bantustan...."
In the end, Israel's security doctrine generally prevailed. Would compliance with Arafat's demand for more power and responsibility have improved Israel's security? The truth is, we will never know....
Now the bureaucrats and the officers who ruled the Palestinians had been asked to pass on their powers to their "wards"...Some of these administrators found it almost unbearable to sit down in Eilat with representatives of their "subjects." We had been engaged in dehumanization for so long that we really thought ourselves "more equal" - and at the same time the threatened side, therefore justifiably hesitant. The group negotiating the transfer of civil powers did not rebel against their mandate, but whenever we offered a concession or a compromise, our people tended to begin by saying" "We have decided to allow you..."
"Security" became ever more constrictive as right-wing soldiers and security advisors began moving into the highest echelons of the military and political establishments during the years of Likud rule. Fourteen of the first fifteen Chiefs of Staff were associated with the Labor Party; the last three - Shaul Mofaz, Moshe Ya'alon and Dan Halutz - are associated with the right wing of the Likud, a mix of ideology and militarism that reinforces a concept of security that, even if sincerely held, cannot create the space needed for a viable Palestinian state.
(3) Israel as a self-defined bastion of the West in the Middle East. Israel's European orientation, including a view of the Arab world as a mere hinterland offering Israel little of value, explains why Israel does not place more importance pursuing peace with its neighbors. Israel does not consider itself a part of the Middle East and has no desire whatsoever to integrate into it. If anything, it sees itself as a Middle Eastern variation of Singapore. Like Singapore, it seeks a correct relationship with its hinterland, but views itself as a service center for the West, to which its economy and political affiliations are tied. (Israel, we might note, has built the Singaporean army into what it is today, the strongest military force in Southeast Asia.) That means it lacks the fundamental motivation to achieve any form of regional integration, as evidenced by its off-hand dismissal of the Saudi Initiative of 2002 that, with the backing of the Arab League, offered Israel recognition, peace and regional integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation. And finally,
(4) The immaterial Palestinians. Israel believes that it can achieve a separate peace with countries of the Arab and Muslim worlds (and maintain its overall strong international position) without reference to the Palestinians. Not with the peoples, it is true; that would require a degree of concession to the Palestinians "on the ground" beyond which Israel is willing to go. Knowing this yet having little interest in either the Palestinian people or the Muslim masses, Israel is willing to limit its state of peace/non-conflict with governments - Egypt, Jordan, an emerging Iraq (although Israel is arming the Kurds), the Gulf states, the countries of North Africa (Libya included), Pakistan, Indonesia and some Muslim African countries. In the view of Israeli leaders surveying with satisfaction the political landscape, the notion that Israel is too strong to ignore seems to hold true.
Though it has sustained some serious hits in Lebanon, at the moment Israel is flying high with its central place in the American neocon agenda of consolidating American Empire, its key role in what the Pentagon calls "The Long War" to ensure American hegemony, remains, despite growing doubts over Israel's ability to "deliver." Whether or not US policy has been "Israelized" or the "strategic alliance" between the two countries merely rests on perceived common interests and services Israel can offer the US, the Bush Administration has provided Israel with a window of opportunity it is exploiting to the hilt. Despite the Lebanese setback, Israeli leaders still believe they can "win," they can beat the Palestinians, engineer Israel's permanent control over the Occupied Territories and achieve enough peace with enough of the Arab and Muslim worlds. That is what Olmert's "Convergence Plan" (now temporarily shelved) is all about, and why he has resolved to implement it while Bush is still in office. Israel's security, then, rests in that broad sphere defined by military might, services provided to the US military, the uncritical support of the American Congress, its military diplomacy including arms sales, Israel's central role in the neocon agenda, its ability to parley European guilt over the Holocaust into political support, its ability to manipulate Arab and Muslim governments and its ability to suppress Palestinian resistance.
So what's wrong with this picture? Nothing, unless one truly wants peace, security and "the right to be normal" - and unless considerations such as justice and human rights enter into the equation. From a purely utilitarian perspective, Israel is a tremendous success. Perhaps the most hopeful sign of Israel's "normalization" is its acceptance by most of the Arab and Muslim world, best illustrated by the very Saudi Initiative Israel so summarily ignored. But this also pinpoints the problem. The Saudi/Arab League offer was contingent upon Israel's relinquishing the Occupation, something it is not prepared to do. True to form, Israel responded to the offer "on the ground" rather than through diplomatic channels. Sharon carried out his plan of "disengagement" from Gaza explicitly to ensure Israel's permanent and unassailable rule over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while his successor Olmert vigorously pushed a plan under which the Occupation would be transformed into a permanent state of Israeli control. All this conforms to Israeli policy going back to Ben Gurion which asserts that if Israel limits its aim to achieving a modus vivendi with the Arab and Muslim worlds rather than full-fledged peace, it can ensure its security while retaining control over the land west of the Jordan River. To be sure, occasional spats will erupt such as those in Gaza or with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel might even be called upon to do America's dirty work in Iran, as it played its role (limited as it was) in Iraq. But those (or at least this was the thinking before the Lebanese debacle) are easily contained, American co-opting of Egypt and Jordan providing the necessary cushion.
This Israeli realpolitik rests on an extremely pragmatic approach to the conflict akin to what the British termed "muddling through." If Israel's goal was to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians and seek genuine peace and regional integration, it could easily have adopted policies that would have achieved that, probably long ago. The goal, however, is conflict management, maintaining the "status quo" in perpetuity, and not conflict resolution. Muddling through well suits Israel's attempt to balance the unbalance-able: expanding territorially at the expense of the Palestinians while still maintaining an acceptable level of security and "quiet." It enables Israel to meet each challenge as it arises rather than to lock itself into a strategy or set of policies that fail to take into account unexpected developments. Yesterday we tried Oslo; today we'll hit Gaza and Lebanon, tomorrow "convergence."
It may not look rational or neat, but conflict management means going with the flow; staying on top of things, knowing where you are going and having contingency plans always at the ready to take advantage of any opening, and dealing with events as they happen. Not long-term strategies but a vision implemented in many often imperceptible stages over time, under the radar so as to attract as little attention or opposition as possible, realized through short-term initiatives like the Convergence Plan which progressively nail down gains "on the ground."
If this analysis is correct, Israel is willing to settle for peace-and-quiet rather than genuine peace, for management of the conflict rather than closure, for territorial gains that may perpetuate tensions and occasional conflicts in the region, but do not jeopardize Israel's essential security. Declaring "the right to be normal" becomes a PR move designed to blame the other side and cast Israel as the victim; it is not something that Israeli leaders sincerely expect. Indeed, their very policies are based on the assumption that functional normality - an acceptable level of "quiet," the economy doing well, a fairly normal existence for an insulated Israeli public most of the time - is a preferred status to the concessions required for a genuine, and attainable, peace.
What About the Battered And Exhausted Israeli Public?
The Jewish Israeli public only partially buys into all this. It would prefer actual peace and normalization to territorial gains in the Occupied Territories, though it definitely prefers separation from the Arab world to regional integration. If Israelis prefer peace to continued conflict with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors, why, then, do they vote for governments that pursue the exact opposite, that prefer conflict management and territory to peace? Mystification of the conflict on the part of Israeli leaders plays a large role, just as it does in the "clash of civilizations" discourse in other Western countries. Since Israel's strategy of enduring a certain level of conflict as an acceptable price for territorial expansion would not be tolerated if it was stated in those terms, successive Israel governments from Ben Gurion to Olmert instead convinced the public that there is simply no political solution. The Arabs are our intransigent and permanent enemies; we Israeli Jews, the victims, have sought only peace and a normal existence, but in vain. And that's just the way it is. As Yitzhak Shamir put it so colorfully: "The Arabs are the same Arabs, the Jews are the same Jews and the sea [into which the former seek to throw the latter] is the same sea." Israel effectively adopted the clash of civilizations notion years before Samuel Huntington.
This manipulative framing of the conflict also fashions discourse in a way that prevents the public from "getting it." Israel's official national narrative supplies a coherent, compelling justification for doing whatever we like without being held accountable - indeed, it renders all criticism of us as "anti-Semitism." The self-evident framing which determines the parameters of all political, media and public discussion goes something like this:
The Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people; Arabs (the term "Palestinian" is seldom used) reside there by sufferance and not by right. Since the problem is implacable Arab hatred and terrorism and the Palestinians are our permanent enemies, the conflict has no political solution. Israel's policies are based on concerns for security. The Arabs have rejected all our many peace offers; we are the victim fighting for our existence. Israel therefore is exempt from accountability for its actions under international law and covenants of human rights.
Any solution, then, must leave Israel in control of the entire country. Any Palestinian state will have to be truncated, non-viable and semi-sovereign. The conflict is a win-lose proposition: either we "win" or "they" do. The answer to Israel's security concerns is a militarily strong Israel aligned with the United States.
One of this framing's most glaring omissions is the very term "occupation." Without that, debate is reduced solely to what "they" are doing to us, in other words, to seemingly self-evident issues of terrorism and security. There are no "Occupied Territories" (in fact, Israel officially denies it even has an occupation), only Judea and Samaria, the heart of our historic homeland, or strangely disembodied but certainly hostile "territories." Quite deliberately, then, Israelis are studiously ignorant of what is going on in the Occupied Territories, whether in terms of settlement expansion and other "facts" on the ground or in terms of government policies. One can listen to the endless political talk shows and commentaries in the Israeli media without ever hearing a reference to the Occupation. Pieces of it yes: Settlements, perhaps; the Separation Barrier (called a "fence" in Israel) occasionally; almost never house demolitions or references to the massive system of Israel-only highways that have incorporated the West Bank irreversibly into Israel proper, never the Big Picture. Although Olmert's Convergence Plan, which is of fundamental importance to the future of Israelis, is based upon the annexation of Israel's major settlement blocs, the public has never been shown a map of those blocs and therefore has no clear idea of what is actually being proposed or its significance for any eventual peace. But that is considered irrelevant anyway. When, very occasionally, Israelis are confronted by the massive "facts of the ground," they invoke the mechanism of minimization: OK, they say, we know all that, but nothing is irreversible, the fence and the settlements can be dismantled, all options continue to be open. In this way they do not have to deal with the enormity of what they have created, one system for two peoples, which, if the status quo cannot be maintained forever, can only lead to a single bi-national state or to apartheid, confining the Palestinians to a truncated Bantustan. While the official narrative deflects public attention from the sources of the conflict, minimization relieves Israelis of responsibility for either perpetuating or resolving it.
Framing, then, becomes much more than a PR exercise. It becomes an essential element of defense in insulating the core of the conflict - the Occupation itself, the pro-active policies of settlement that belie the claims of "security," and Israel's responsibility as the occupying power - from both public scrutiny and public discussion. Defending that framing is therefore tantamount to defending Israel's very claim to the country, the very "moral basis" of Zionism we Israelis constantly invoke. No wonder it is impossible to engage even liberal "pro-Israeli" individuals and organizations in a substantive and genuine discussion of the issues at hand.
One result of such discursive processes is the disempowerment of the Israeli public. If, in fact, there is no solution, then all that's left is to hunker down and carve out as much normality as possible. For Israelis the entire conflict with the Arabs has been reduced to one technical issue: How do we ensure our personal security? Since conflict management assumes a certain level of violence, the public has entered into a kind of deal with the government: You reduce terrorism to "acceptable" levels, and we won't ask how you do it. In a sense the public extends to the government a line of credit. We don't care how you guarantee our personal security. Establish a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories if you think that will work; load the Arabs on trucks and transfer them out of the country; build a wall so high that, as someone said, even birds can't fly over it. We, the Israeli Jewish public, don't care how you do it. Just do it if you want to be re-elected.
This is what accounts for the apparent contradiction between the public will and the policies of the governments it elects. That explains how in 1999 Barak was elected with a clear mandate to end the conflict, and when he failed and the Intifada broke out, that same public, in early 2001, elected his mirror opposite, Ariel Sharon, the architect of Israel's settlement policies who eschewed any negotiations at all. Israelis are willing to sacrifice peace for security - and do not see the contradiction - because true "peace" is considered unattainable. In fact, "peace" carries a negative political connotation amongst most Israelis. It denotes concessions, weakness, increased vulnerability. Israel's unique electoral system, in which voters cast their ballots for parties rather than candidates and end up either with unwieldy coalition governments incapable of formulating and pursuing a coherent policy, only adds to the public's disempowerment and its unwillingness to entrust any government with a mandate to arrive at a final settlement with the Arabs.
Because the "situation," as we call it, has been reduced to a technical problem of personal security without political solution, Israelis have become passive, bordering on irresponsible. They have been removed from the political equation altogether. Any attempt to actually resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict (and its corollaries) will have to come from the outside; the Israeli public will simply not make a proactive move in that direction. While the government will obviously oppose such intervention, the Israeli public may actually welcome it - if it is announced by a friend (the US), pronounced authoritatively with little space for haggling (as Reagan did over the sale of AWACs surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s), and couched as originating out of concern for Israel's security. Israeli Jews may be likened to the whites of South Africa during the last phase of apartheid. The latter had grown accustomed to apartheid and would not themselves have risen up to abolish it. But when international and domestic pressures became unbearable and de Klerk finally said, "It's over," there was no uprising, even among the Afrikaners who constructed the regime. I sincerely believe that if cowboy Bush would get up one morning and say to Israel: "We love you, we will guarantee your security, but the Occupation has to end. Period," that you would hear the sigh of relief from Israelis all the way in Washington.
As it stands, the Israeli leadership thinks we are winning, the people are not so sure but are too disinformed and cowed by security threats (bogus and real) to act, and the peace movement has been reduced to a pariah few crying out in the wilderness. Given the support Israel receives from the US in return for services rendered to the Empire, Europe's quiescent complicity and Palestinian isolation, the question remains whether Israel's strategy of conflict management has not in fact succeeded - again, considerations of justice, genuine peace and human rights aside. Say what you will, the realists can point to almost sixty years during which Israel has emerged as a regional, if not global superpower in firm control of the greater Land of Israel. If Olmert succeeds in implementing his Convergence Plan, the conflict with the Palestinians is over from Israel's point of view - and we've won.
Yet so overwhelming is our military might, so massive and permanent have we made our controlling presence in the Occupied Territories, that we have fatally overplayed our hand. Ben Gurion's formula worked. We now have everything we want - the entire Land of Israel west of the Jordan River - and the Arab governments have sued for peace. But four elements of the equation that Ben Gurion (or Meir or Peres, or Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert and all the rest) did not take into account have arisen to fundamentally challenge the paradigm of power:
(1) Demographics. Israel does not have enough Jews to sustain its control over the greater Land of Israel. (Indeed, whether Israel proper can remain "Jewish" is a question, with the Jewish majority down just under 75%, factoring in the Arab population, the non-Jewish Russians and emigration.) Zionism created a strong state, but it did not succeed in convincing Jews to settle it. The Jewish population of Israel represents less than a third of world Jewry; only 1% of American Jews made aliyah. In fact, whenever Jews had a choice - in North Africa, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, Iran, South Africa and Argentina, not to mention all the countries of Europe and North America - they chose not to come to Israel. And it is demographics that is driving Olmert's Convergence Plan. "It's only a matter of time before the Palestinians demand 'one man, one vote' - and then, what will we do?", he asked plaintively at the 2004 Herzilya conference. Olmert's scheme retains control of Israel and the Occupied Territories (in his terms Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem) while doing the only thing possible with the Palestinians who make up half the population - locking them into a truncated Bantustan on a sterile 15-20% of the country.
(2) Palestinians. Israel's historical policy of ignoring and bypassing the Palestinians can no longer work. Palestinians comprise about half the population of the land west of the Jordan River, all of which Israel seeks to control, and will be a clear majority if significant numbers of refugees are repatriated to the Palestinian Bantustan. Keeping that population under control means that Israel must adopt ever more repressive policies, whether prohibiting Israeli Arab citizens from bringing their spouses and children from the Occupied Territories to live with them in Israel, as recent legislation has decreed, or imprisoning an entire people behind 26-foot concrete walls. Despite Olmert's assertion that Israelis have a right to live a normal life, normalcy cannot be achieved unilaterally. Neither an Occupation nor a Bantustan nor any other form of oppression can be normalized or routinized; it will always be resisted by the oppressed. Strong as Israel is militarily, it has not succeeded in pacifying the Palestinians over the last 40 years of occupation, 60 years since the Naqba or century since the Zionist movement claimed exclusive patrimony over Palestine and begin to systematically dispossess the indigenous population. The Palestinians today possess one weapon that Israel cannot defeat, that it must one day deal with, and that is their position as gatekeepers. Until the Palestinians signal the wider Arab, Muslim and international communities that they have reached a satisfactory political accommodation with Israel, the conflict will continue and Israel will fail to achieve either closure or normalcy.
(3) The Arab/Muslim peoples. The role of Palestinians as gatekeepers reflects the rise in importance of civil society as a player in political affairs. Israel's lack of concern over the Arab and Muslim "streets," its reliance solely on peace-making with governments, indicates a major failure in Israel's strategic approach to the conflict: Its underestimation of the power of the people. Sentiments such as "We don't care about making peace with the Arab peoples; correct relations with their governments are enough," ignore the fragile state of Arab governments created by the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, which in turn has been fueled in large part (though not exclusively, of course) by the Occupation. If Hezbollah has the power to create the instability is has, imagine what will happen if the Muslim Brotherhood seizes power in Egypt. The disproportionate bias towards Israel in American and European policies only fuels and sharpens the "clash of civilizations," while Israel's Occupation effectively prevents progressive elements from emerging in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The strategic role played by Palestinians as gatekeepers has a significant effect upon the stability of the entire global system. The Israel-Palestine conflict is no longer a localized one.
(4) International civil society. As we have seen, Israeli leaders, surveying the international political landscape as elected officials do, take great comfort. They believe that, with uncritical and unlimited American support, their country is "winning" its conflict over the Palestinians (and Israel's other enemies, real and imagined). Like political leaders everywhere, they don't seriously take "the people" into account. Yet, The People - what is known as international civil society - have some achievements under their belt when it comes to defeating injustice. They forced the American government to enforce the civil rights of black people in the US and to abandon the war in Vietnam. They played major roles in the collapse of South African apartheid, of the Soviet Union and of the Shah's regime, among many others. Since governments will almost never do the right thing on their own, it was civil society, through the newly established UN, that forced them to accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and a whole corpus of human rights and international law. With the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court at our disposal, as well as other instruments, and as civil society organizes into Social Forums and other forms of action coalitions, major cases of injustice, such as Israel's Occupation, are becoming less and less sustainable. As the Occupation assumes the proportions of an injustice on the scale of apartheid - a conflict with global implications - Olmert may convince Bush and Blair to support his plan, but the conflict will not be over until two gatekeepers say it is, the Palestinians and the people worldwide.
The Only Way Out: Forcing Israel To Take Responsibility
Israel has only one way out: It must take responsibility for its actions. No more blaming Arafat and Hamas and the Arabs in general. No more playing the victim. No more denying Occupation or the human rights of a people just as lodged into this land as the Jews, if not more so. No more using the military to ensure "our" security. No more unilateralism. Instead, Israel must work with the Palestinians to create a genuine two-state solution. No Geneva Initiative whereby the Palestinians get a non-viable 22% of the country; nor convergence nor realignment nor apartheid. Simply an end of Occupation and a return to the 1967 borders (in which Israel still retains 78% of the country) - or, if a just and viable two-state solution is in fact buried forever under massive Israeli settlement blocs and highways, then another solution. And a just solution to the refugee issue. Over time, the Palestinians - who are greater friends of Israel than any Israeli realizes - might even use their good offices to eventually enter into a regional confederation with the neighboring states (see my article in Tikkun 20[1)]17-21: "Israel in a Middle East Union: A 'Two-stage' Approach to the Conflict.").
This is a tall order, and it will not happen soon. The military's mobilization of Jewish Israelis has created a remarkably high consensus (85% support the construction of the Wall; 93% supported the recent war in Lebanon), making it impossible for truly divergent views to penetrate. Some of this has to do with overpowering feelings of self-righteousness, combined with the perception of Israel as the victim (and hence having no responsibility for what happens, a party that cannot be held accountable). Disdain towards Arabs also allows Israel to harm Palestinian (and again Lebanese) civilian populations with impunity and no sense of guilt or wrongdoing.
Although Israel has a small but vital peace movement and dissident voices are heard among intellectuals and in the press, the combination of mystification ("there is no partner for peace"), disdain, vilification and dehumanization of the Palestinians, a self-perception of Israelis-as-victims, the supremacy of all-encompassing "security" concerns, and a compelling but closed meta-narrative means that little if any space exists for a public debate that could actually change policy. Because the Israel public has effectively removed itself as a player - except in granting passive support to its political leaders who pursue a program of territorial expansion and conflict management - a genuine, just and sustainable peace will not come to the region without massive international pressure. This is starting to happen as the Occupation assumes global proportions and churches, together with other civil society groups, weigh campaigns of divestment and economic sanctions against Israel - forms of the very nonviolent resistance that the world has been demanding. The Israeli Jewish public, unfortunately, has abrogated its responsibility. Zionism, which began as a movement of Jews to take charge of their lives, to determine their own fate, has ironically become a skein of pretexts serving only to prevent Israelis from taking their fate in their own hands. The "deal" with the political parties has turned Israeli government policies into mere pretexts for oppression, for "winning" over another people, for colluding with American Empire.
The problem with Israel is that, for all the reasons given in this paper, it has made itself impervious to normal political processes. Negotiations do not work because Israeli policy is based on "bad faith." If Israel's actual agenda is territorial expansion, retaining control of the entire country west of the Jordan and foreclosing any viable Palestinian state, then any negotiations that might threaten that agenda are put off, delayed or avoided. All Israeli officials and their surrogates - local religious figures, representatives of organized Jewish communities abroad, liberal Zionist peace organizations, intellectuals and journalists defining themselves as "Zionist," "pro-Israel" public figures in any given country and others - become gatekeepers. In effect - deliberately or not - their essential role is not to engage but to deflect engagement, to "build a fence" around the core Israeli agenda so as to appear to be forthcoming but to actually avert any negotiations or pressures that might threaten Israel's unilateral agenda.
It's a win-lose equation. If Ben Gurion's principle that the Arabs will sue for peace even after we get everything we want, then why compromise? True, Israel could have had peace, security and normalization years ago, but not a "unified" Jerusalem, Judea or Samaria. If the price is continued hostility of the Arab and Muslim masses and no integration into the region, well, that's certainly something we can live with. In the meantime, we can rely on our military to handle any challenges to either our Occupation or our hegemony that might arise.
This logic carried us through almost to the end, to Olmert's Convergence Plan that was intended to "end" the Occupation and establish a permanent regime of Israeli dominance. And then Israel hit the wall, a dead-end: The rise of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority and the traumatic "non-victory" over Hezbollah. Both those events exposed the fatal flaw of the non-conflict peace policy. The Palestinians are indeed the gatekeepers, and the Arab governments in whom Israel placed all its hopes are in danger of being swept away by a wave of fundamentalism fueled, in large part, by the Occupation and Israel's open alignment with American Empire. Peace, even a minimally stable non-peace, cannot be achieved without dealing, once and for all, with the Palestinians. The war in Lebanon has left Israel staring into the abyss. The Oslo peace process died six years ago, the Road Map initiative was stillborn and, in the wake of the war, Olmert has announced that his convergence plan, the only political plan the government had, was being shelved for the time being. Ha'aretz commentator Aluf Benn spoke for many Israelis when he reflected:
Cancellation of the convergence plan raises two main questions: What is happening in the territories and what is the point of continuing Olmert's government? Olmert has no answers. The response to calls to dismiss him is the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm. But what, exactly, is the difference? Both now propose preservation of the status quo in the territories, rehabilitation of the North and grappling with Iran. At this point, what advantage does the head of state have over the head of the opposition? (Ha'aretz, August 25, 2006)
Without the ability to end or even manage its regional conflicts unilaterally, faced with the limitations of military power, increasingly isolated in a world for whom human rights does matter, yet saddled with a political system that prevents governments from taking political initiative and a public that can only hunker down, Israel finds itself not in a status quo but in a downward spiral of violence leading absolutely nowhere. Even worse, it finds itself strapped to a superpower that itself is discovering the futility of unilateralism in its own Middle East adventures even while encouraging Israel to join in. Still, knowing that governments will not do the right thing without being prodded by the people, the Israeli peace camp welcomes the active intervention of the progressive international civil society. In the end we can only hope that the Israeli mainstream will join us.
The door to peace is still wide open. The Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian and Syrian governments have said that war raises new possibilities for peace. Even Peretz said as much, but was forced to backtrack when Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, declared the "time was not ripe" for talks with Syria. Instead the Olmert government appointed the chief of the air force to be its "campaign coordinator" in any possible war with Iran, and then named Avigdor Lieberman, the extremist right-winger who is on record as favoring a attacks on Iran as well as a nuclear strike on Egypt's Aswan Dam, as Deputy Prime Minister and "Minister of Strategy."
Israel will simply not walk through that door, period. There is no indication that one of the lessons learned from the Lebanese disaster will be the futility of imposing a military solution on the region. On the contrary, the chorus of protest in Israel in the wake of the war is: Why didn't the government let the army win? Demands for the heads of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz come from their military failure, not from a failure of their military policy. But instead of demanding a government inquiry as to why Israel lost the war, the sensible Ha'aretz columnist Danny Rubinstein suggests a government inquiry on why Israel has not achieved peace with its neighbors over the past sixty years.
The question then is, will the international community, the only force capable of putting an end to the superfluous destabilization of the global system caused by Israel's Occupation, step in and finally impose a settlement agreeable to all the parties? So far, the answer appears to be "no," constrained in large part b
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Editorial: The Occult Technology of Power
Anonymous
Copyright 1974 by Alpine Enterprises
PO Box 766, Dearborn, Michigan 48121
To My Son:
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." --- Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield)
In this thin volume you will find the transcripts of your initiation into the secrets of my empire Read them again not for the arcane knowledge which is now second nature you, hut in order to re-experience the shock and awe you felt twenty years ago when at age thirty the fabulous scope of my power was revealed to you by my trusted, and now mostly departed advisors. Remember the surprise, to the point of disbelief, with which you beheld the invisibly delicate, but invincible chains of deceit, confusion, or coercion with which we finance capitalists enslave this chaotic world. Remember the feats of will and strategy that have been required to retain our position. Then, inspect your retinue carefully. Your heir must be equal to and eager for the task much as you were. Choose him carefully. As I lie here waiting for the end I can afford to relish the thought our empire lasting forever as I never dared while in charge. Rational power calculations, so easily disrupted by the thrill of power, are now entirely in your hands.
"Know, Will, Dare, and be Silent!" --- Aleister Crowley
1. MY INTRODUCTION TO YOUR INITIATION ~
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman a rope over an abyss."
"I teach you the Superman. Man is something to be surpassed." --- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Self reverence, self-knowledge, self-control these three alone lead to sovereign power." --- Alfred Lord Tennyson
"And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is." --- Walt Whitman
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." --- Aleister Crowley: The Book of the Law
My Son, the time has arrived to make formal what you have confidently awaited for some years. Of all your brothers, sisters, and cousins, as well as the offspring of my close allies, I have chosen you to be heir to my empire. All the trust funds, foundations, and accounts through which my empire is controlled shall pass into your hands upon my retirement. All my alliances, understandings, and enmities with my handful of peers around the globe shall gradually become yours. Over the next twenty years we shall collaborate closer and closer, you and I, until, we finally act as one.
For ten years you have toured my empire in a succession of managerial assignments and are now familiar with the outward operations of my crucial banking, foundation, governmental, and think tank organizations. Until now, my advisors and I have deflected your questions as to how and if my diverse operations and holdings, which seem autonomous and even contradictory, are integrated into an organic whole to serve the dynasty's interests. The fact that you asked these questions, rejecting my carefully nurtured public image as an idle, coupon clipping philanthropist, was a major factor in the high esteem in which I hold you. Most of your competitors found puppet leadership in any one of my organizations so awesome and gratifying that they immediately eliminated themselves from the contest for the top position which you have won. Such men of limited vision are necessary for my success. They bend unconsciously to the subtle pressures to which I expose them. They can be led in any direction I choose by simple-minded rationalizations aimed at their vanity without being privy to my motives which would be short lived secrets in their undisciplined and envious minds.
Most important in your selection as my successor, however was your psychological nature which has been faithfully reported to me over the years by my associates many of whom have advanced psychological training. A man in my position must have total mastery over his emotions. All actions affecting the power of the dynasty must be taken on the basis of coldly reasoned power calculations if the dynasty is to survive and prosper at the expense of its subjects and rivals. All power is impossible to those whose pursuit is ruled by sentimentality, love, envy power-lust revenge, prejudice, hatred, justice, alcohol, drugs, or sexual desire. Sustained power is impossible to those who repress all their irrational longings into their subconscious only to have them return in compulsive, out of control behavior that inevitably leads to their ruin. Although often clothed in the rationalizations of power calculation, compulsive behavior is at root, the emotionalism of a frightened child, desperately projecting his inner agony into a reality he is afraid to under stand, much less master.
Although you now must begin to pursue it consciously you have already displayed the alienation from your emotional nature that is so essential to achieving real worldly power. You must recognize your emotional nature as a primitive survival mechanism that was appropriate for the jungle and perhaps useful to common men, but useless for the tasks that confront us finance capitalists. Attachment to what you do, just because you do it, is the primary psychological characteristic of ordinary mortals. Such cognitive dissonance spells disaster for us. Our emotional mechanism makes our lives worth living, but is no guide to the occult arts of intrigue. So, continue to gratify your senses and emotions fully at your leisure. As long as the empire prospers you will have the resources to indulge in systematic gratification which will leave your irrational urges sated and, therefore, powerless. You will never be in the unenviable position of the middle class strivers who must, from lack of resources, repress their emotional natures if they are to attain any power whatever during their lives. Typically, they end up taking their pleasure from the victories and cruelties of their struggle. Thus, their end ceases to be power and they eventually defeat themselves with reckless behavior in pursuit of dominant thrills.
I have brought you into seclusion with my most trusted advisors in order to inaugurate a new phase of your instruction. Your formal training in the "official" political-economic world is now complete. This weekend will mark the beginning of your training in the occult technology of power that lurks behind outer appearances. As your tutors will explain, "occult" or secret knowledge is the basis of all power in human society, so I use the word "occult" advisedly, in its pristine usage. As I am sure you are aware by now, productivity in itself does not secure power and therefore does not secure the gratifications of life. After all, slaves can be productive. None of my organizations in which you served so well are concerned with advancing the techniques of satisfying human needs and desires. Rather, all are dedicated to the surreptitious centralization of productive, but especially coercive, efforts in my hands or in creating the intellectual climate in which such veiled control would be tolerated in the future. I destroy or paralyze productive efforts that cannot be ensnarled in my web
After a break Professor A. will take the floor in order to put finance capitalism into full biological perspective. His short talk will be followed by similar abbreviated summaries by his six associates, all of whom you know well. The rest of the weekend will be devoted to forthright fielding of your questions.
2. PROFESSOR A. ON THE ROLE OF FRAUD IN NATURE ~
"Are we not all predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist?" --- Anton S. LaVey
"Nature, to be commanded must be obeyed " --- Francis Bacon
Organisms typically base their success primarily on deception and rely on actual force or mutually advantageous trade (symbiosis) as little as possible. This should be nearly self-evident, but is generally overlooked due to the moral codes we elitists foist on our subjects. Let me give a few examples in case the moral culture has to some extent impaired your powers of objective observation. Camouflage is universal among predators and victims alike. Blossoms imitate fragrances and colors which are sexually attractive to certain insects in order to effect pollination. Dogs bark ferociously and feign attack on enemies of whom they are, in fact, terrified. The Venus Fly Trap plant lures flies to their deaths. Men proclaim their altruism to others and even themselves while they selfishly scramble for personal advantage. If you doubt that fraud is normal in nature you should read section 3 of the first chapter of Robert Ardrey's "The Social Contract" for a wealth of fascinating examples. (Of course Ardrey fails to grasp the full application to contemporary human society of his brilliant insights into man's animal nature.)
Human mental prowess and communicative powers have merely provided superb elaboration on nature's old theme of fraud and added its own distinctive feature: self delusion. Primitive animal hierarchies are based on bluff and bluster, and each member is well aware of and accepts, at least temporarily, its position in the hierarchy. The same wild enthusiasm and fascination for dominance and submission rages in human hearts. However, fraud is taken one step further. Not only is fraudulent bluff and bluster used to achieve dominance but fraudulent altruism and collective institutions are used to conceal dominance once achieved. Human hierarchies, in contrast to the animal variety, are best sustained when the members are deluded regarding the oppressive nature, or better, even the very existence of the hierarchy!
Visible rulers are highly vulnerable. Thus we see visible rulers claiming to be representatives of God, the common good, the material forces of history, the general will (either through vote or intuition), tradition, or other intellectual "spooks" that serve to lessen the envy of the ruled for the rulers. Encouraging such self-delusions among the masses of the ruled is universal for visible governments. However, such spooks are little protection for the leaders of such systems against their sophisticated elite rivals and no protection against men like your father. The Roman Empire was unquestioned by the mass of its subjects for centuries, but the Emperors lived in constant fear of coup and assassination.
By embracing deception wholeheartedly at every level, finance capitalism, or rule through money, has fashioned the ultimate system yet devised for the secure exercise of power. Men like your father, the hidden masters of finance capitalism, govern those who govern, produce, and think through invisible financial tentacles, the operations of which will be elucidated later by my colleagues. Dominance in all aspects of society is surreptitiously accomplished while the great majority of the ruled, and even most of the visible leaders, believe themselves to be fairly autonomous, if harried, members of a pluralistic society. Nearly everyone believes major decisions to be the vector sum of autonomous pressures exerted by business, labor, government, consumers, social classes, and other special interests. In fact, the vectors of societal power are carefully balanced by us so that any net movement is in a direction chosen by us. The only fly in the ointment is the occasional, but extremely messy, interferences by competing financial dynasties. This disconcerting problem will not be a major topic for this weekend.
I now yield to Professor Q. who will elucidate the central secrets of your father's immense money power.
3. PROFESSOR Q. ON OCCULT KNOWLEDGE AS THE KEY TO POWER ~
"The theory of aggregate production which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition..." --- John Maynard Keynes ~ Forward to the German Edition of the General Theory (September 7, 1936)
Throughout history, secure ruling elites arise through secret, or occult knowledge which they carefully guard and withhold from outsiders The power of such elites or cults diminishes as their occult knowledge is transformed into "scientific" knowledge and vanishes as soon as it becomes "common sense." Before analyzing the secrets of the finance capitalist money cult let us glance for historical perspective at occult astronomy, the oldest source of stable rule known to man of which astrology is hut the pathetic remnant.
As soon as men abandoned the life of wandering, tribal hunters to till the soil they needed to predict the seasons. Such knowledge was required in order to know when to plant, when to expect floods in fertile valleys, when to expect rainy seasons, and so on. Months of backbreaking work were wasted by the unavailability of the calendar, a convenience we take for granted. The men who first studied and grasped the regularities of sun, moon, and stars that presage the seasons had a valuable commodity to sell and they milked it to the fullest at the expense of their credulous fellowmen. The occult priesthoods of early astronomers and mathematicians such as the designers of Stonehenge, convinced their subjects that they alone had contact with the gods, and thus, they alone could assure the return of planting seasons and weather favorable to bountiful harvests. The staging (predicting) of solar and lunar eclipses was particularly effective in awing the community. The general success resulting from following the priesthood's tilling, planting, nurturing, and harvesting timetables insured the priesthood's power. Today's Christmas holiday season continues the tradition set by ancient priesthoods, who conducted rituals on the winter solstice to reverse the retreat of the sun from the sky. Their invariable success was followed by wild celebrations. Popular knowledge of seasonal regularities was discouraged by every manner of mysticism and outlandish ritual imaginable. Failures in prediction were blamed on sins of the people and used to justify intensified oppression. For centuries people who had literally no idea of the number of days between seasons and couldn't count anyway, cheerfully gave up a portion of their harvests, as well as their most beautiful daughters, to their "faithful servants" in the priesthoods.
The power of our finance capitalist money cult rests on a similar secret knowledge, primarily in the field of economics. Our power is weakened by real advances in economic science (Fortunately, the public at large and most revolutionaries remain totally ignorant of economics). However, we established money lords have been able to prolong and even reverse our decline by systematically corrupting economic science with fallacious and spurious doctrines. Through our power in the universities, publishing, and mass media we have been able to reward the sincere, professorial cranks whose spurious doctrines happen to rationalize in terms of "common good" the government supported institutions, laws, and economic measures upon which our money powers depend. Keynesianism is the highest form of phony economics yet developed to our benefit. The highly centralized, mixed economy resulting from the policies advocated by Lord Keynes for promoting "prosperity" has all the characteristics required to make our rule invulnerable to our twin nemeses: real private competition in the economic arena and real democratic process in the political arena. Laissez-faire or free market, classical economics was our original attempt to corrupt economic science. Its beautiful internal consistency blinded economists for many years to the fact that it had virtually nothing to do with current reality. However, we are so powerful today that it is no longer possible to conceal our imposing institutions with the appearances of free competition Keynesianism rationalizes this omnipotent state which we require, while retaining the privileges of private property on which our power ultimately rests. Although the interim reforms advocated by Marx in his Communist Manifesto such as central banking, income tax, and other centralizing measures can be corrupted to coincide exactly with our requirements, we no longer allow Marxist movements major power in developed countries. Our coercive institutions are already in place. Any real steps toward communism would mean our downfall. Of course, phony Marxism is an excellent ideological veil in which to cloak our puppet dictators in underdeveloped areas.
Secondarily, the power of the lords of money rests on an occult knowledge in the area of politics and history. We have quite successfully corrupted these sciences. Although many people are familiar with our secrets through such books as 1984 by the disillusioned George Orwell, few take them seriously and usually dismiss such ideas as paranoia. Since real politics is motivated by individual self-interest, history is viewed most accurately as a struggle for power and wealth We do our best to obscure this self-evident truth by popularizing the theory that history is made by the impersonal struggles between ideas, political systems, ideologies, races, and classes. Through systematic infiltration of all major intellectual, political, and ideological organizations, using the lure of financial support and instant publicity, we have been able to set the limits of public debate within the ideological requirements of our money power.
The so-called Left-Right political spectrum is our creation. In fact, it accurately reflects our careful, artificial polarization of the population on phony issues that prevents the issue of our power from arising in their minds. The Left supports civil liberties and opposes economic or entrepreneurial liberty. The Right supports economic liberty and opposes civil liberty. Of course neither can exist fully (which is our goal) without the other. We control the Right-Left conflict such that both forms of liberty are suppressed to the degree we require Our own liberty rests not on legal or moral "rights," but on our control of the government bureaucracy and courts which apply the complex, subjective regulations we dupe the public into supporting for our benefit.
Innumerable meaningless conflicts to divert the attention of the public from our operations find fertile ground in the bitter hatreds of the Right/Left imbroglio. Right and Left are irreconcilable on racial policy, treatment of criminals, law enforcement, pornography, foreign policy, women's lib, and censorship to name just a few issues. Although censorship in the name of "fairness" has been useful in broadcasting and may yet be required in journalism, we generally do not take sides in these issues. Instead we attempt to prolong the conflicts by supporting both sides as required. War, of course, is the ultimate diversionary conflict and the health of our system. War provides the perfect cover of emergency and crisis behind which we consolidate our power. Since nuclear war presents dangers even to us, more and more we have resorted to economic crisis, energy shortages, ecological hysteria, and managed political drama to fill the gap. Meaningless, brushfire wars, though, remain useful.
We promote phony free enterprise on the Right and phony democratic socialism on the Left. Thus, we obtain a "free enterprise" whose "competition" is carefully regulated by the bureaucracy we control and whose nationalized enterprises are controlled directly through our government. In this way we maintain a society in which the basis of our power, legal titles to property and money, remain secure, but in which the peril of free, unregulated competition is avoided and popular sovereignty is nullified. The democratic process is a sitting duck for our money power. Invariably we determine the candidates of the major parties and then proceed to pick the winners. Any attempts at campaign reforms simply put the rules of the game more firmly under our government's control.
Totalitarianism of the fascist of communist varieties is no danger to us as long as bastions of private property remain to serve as our bases of operation. Totalitarian governments of both Right and Left, because of the vulnerability of their highly visible leaders to party rivals, can be manipulated easily from abroad. Primarily, totalitarian dictatorships efficiently prevent new money lords that could challenge our power from arising in whole continents, civilizations, and races.
Perhaps a few words on ideology proper are in order before I conclude. The only valid ideology, of course is rational egoism, that is, the maximization of the individual's gratification by whatever means prove practical. This requires power over nature, especially, when possible, power over other humans who are the most versatile and valuable tools of all. Fortunately, we do not have a society of egoists. Money lords would be impossible in such a society as the mental spooks and rationalizations by which we characteristically manipulate and deceive would be a laughing stock Under such circumstances a policy of live and let live or true "laissez-faire" anarchy might be the only alternative. Certainly a hierarchical order would be difficult to maintain by force alone. However, in the current era, while minds are yet in the thrall of altruistic collectivistic, and divine moralistic spooks, the egoist's rational course is to utilize such spooks to control others.
The next speaker, Professor M., will detail the key institution of our power: Central Banking.
4. PROFESSOR M. ON THE ECONOMICS OF CENTRAL BANKING ~
"It (a bank) can take the depositors' goods, the goods that it holds for safekeeping, and lend them out to people on the market. It can earn interest on these loans, and as long as only a small percentage of depositors ask to redeem their certificates at any one time, no one is the wiser. Or, alternatively, it can issue pseudo warehouse receipts for goods that are not there and lend these on the market. This is the more subtle practice. The pseudo receipts will be exchanged on the same basis as the true receipts, since there is no indication on their face whether they are legitimate or not. It should be clear that this practice is outright fraud." --- Murray Rothbard: Man, Economy, and State
"The bold effort the present bank has made to control the Government, the distress it has wantonly produced,. . ., are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American People should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution (The Bank of the United States), or the establishment of another like it." --- Andrew Jackson (December 2, 1834)
As you have a doctorate degree in economics from a great university I will touch as lightly as my verbosity allows on facts accepted by economic "science" and proceed to occult aspects of Central Banking.
Since the division of labor is the key to all human achievement and satisfaction, a system of exchange is crucial. Barter is hopelessly complicated. A command economy, in which each does and receives what be is told, is also hopelessly cumbersome and fails to take advantage of individual initiative, ability, and concrete knowledge. A medium of exchange, money, is the obvious solution. (Even our highly centralized economies on the socialist model now enthusiastically embrace money as an indispensable simplifying tool in their economic planning.)
When left to themselves people of a given geographical area settled upon a durable luxury commodity, usually gold or silver, to use as money. Because money is a store of value as well as a medium of exchange, people saved part of their gold income rather than spending it all. This gold was often stored in the vaults of a local goldsmith, the precursor of the modern banker, for safekeeping. The depositor received a receipt that entitled him to an equal quantity and quality of gold on demand from the goldsmith. At some point the goldsmith realized that there was no reason he could not loan out some of the gold for interest as long as he kept gold on hand sufficient to meet the fairly predictable withdrawal rate. After all, be simply promised to pay on demand, not bold the gold as such. Better yet, be could simply issue more receipts for gold than be bad gold and the receipts, renamed notes, could circulate freely among the populace as money.
However, he soon found that there was a definite limit set on this process by reality. Not all the extra notes issued circulated forever among the public. The rate of note redemption began to increase rapidly as the receipts passed into the hands of people unfamiliar with his reputation and especially when competitive goldsmiths, always eager for more gold reserves, came into possession of his notes. To prevent a disastrous run on his gold reserves, note issuance had to be kept within bounds. But the spending power of over-issuance was a grave temptation. Especially relished was the power over governments, industry, and merchants that the miraculous loan power of the goldsmith could obtain. Many succumbed to temptation, overextended themselves and brought ruin to their depositors while others slowly became wealthy bankers by pursuing conservative loan policies.
At this point, according to economic "science," Central Banks are instituted to protect the public from periodic financial catastrophe at the hands of unscrupulous fractional reserve bankers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Central Banks are established to remove the limitation on over-issuance that reality places on competitive banking systems. As early as ancient Babylon and India, Central Banking, the art of monopolizing the issuance of money, had been developed into a perfect method for looting the general public. Even today many bankers copy the traditions of the earlier exploitive priesthoods and design their banks to resemble temples! Defenses of Central Banking are simply part of the deception that lies at the heart of all power elites.
Let us look at the way a new Central Bank is created where none has existed previously. We bankers approach the Prince or ruling assembly (both of whom always want more money to fight wars or to curry favor with the people and, typically, are ignorant of economics) with a compelling proposal: "Grant our bank a national Charter to regulate private banking and to issue legal tender notes, that is, force our notes to be accepted as payment for all debts, pubic and private. In exchange we will provide the government all the notes it prudently requires at interest rates easily payable with existing taxes. The increased government purchasing power thus created will simultaneously assure the power an prestige of the currently precarious nation and stimulate the sluggish, credit starved economy to new heights of prosperity. Most important the violent banking panics and credit collapses caused by unscrupulous private bankers will be replaced by our even handed, beneficent and scientific management of money and banking. Our public-spirited expertise will be at the disposal of the state while we remain independent enough of momentary political pressures to assure sound management."
For a while this system seems to work remarkably well with full employment for everyone. The government an public does not notice that we issuers of the new notes are using the notes we create out of thin air to surreptitiously build economic empires at the expense of established interests. Because of the legal tender laws, few of the new notes issued by the Central Bank are returned for redemption in gold. In fact, private banks and even a few foreign banks may begin to use the Central Bank's notes as reserves for further issuance of credit. Soon enough, though, prices begin to rise as the added notes increase demand relative to the quantity of goods and services. As the value of their savings decline more and more foreigners in particular begin to question the value of the Central Bank's notes and start to demand redemption in gold. We, of course do not take responsibility for the rampant inflation when it comes. We blame inflation on evil speculators who drive up prices for personal gain, as well as the greed of organized labor and business who are promptly made subject to wage and price controls. Even the consumer can be made to feel guilty for agreeing to pay the high prices! Mistaking symptoms for causes the government accepts the banker's analysis of the problem and continues to give the Bank free reign in monetary policy.
By slowing the rate of note issuance periodically, the ultimate crisis stage is postponed until many decades after the original Central Bank Charter was granted. Before the rapidly dwindling gold reserves on which faith in our Bank depends is exhausted we abruptly contract our loan volume to private industry and government as well. With the contraction of the money supply a great deflationary crash begins in earnest with all its attendant unemployment, bankruptcies, and civil strife. We do not take responsibility for the depression. We blame it on evil hoarders who are refusing to spend their money and the prophets of doom who are spoiling business confidence. The government accepts this analysis and leaves monetary policy in our hands. If things go well we bankers channel the fury and unrest into puppet movements and pressure groups that carry our agents into full control of the government. Once in charge we devalue our outstanding bank notes in terms of gold and make them inconvertible for all but possibly foreign Central Banks and begin plans to restore a "prosperity" that will be totally ours.
When lucky, we are able to confiscate the gold of private citizens as punishment for hoarding during the climax of the depression.
Once the old order is subdued during the chaos of the crash and desperation of the depression, the field is open for our full finance capitalist system to be realized. If the money lords behind the Central Bank can avoid lapsing into political and economic competition among themselves a new and lasting order can be established. A war timed for this period of consolidation provides the perfect excuse for the regimentation required to crush all opposition.
Professor B., a former Chairman of a Central Bank, will explain the functioning of the Central Plank in the typical, fully developed finance capitalist system.
5. PROFESSOR B. ON THE FUNCTION OF THE CENTRAL BANK IN THE MATURE FINANCE CAPITALIST SYSTEM ~
"We are undone, my dear sir, if legislation is still permitted which makes our money, much or little, real or imaginary, as the moneyed interests shall choose to make it." --- Thomas Jefferson
"From now on depressions will be scientifically created." --- Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr.-1923
In its pristine form a Central Bank is a private monopoly of a nation's money and credit issuance supported by the coercive power of the state. That the Central Bank be directly in our hands is vital until our new order is firmly established throughout the governmental, business, intellectual and political spheres of society. After our order is consolidated, formal nationalization of the Central Bank with great fanfare is usually advisable in order to dispel any lingering suspicion that it is operated for private gain. Of course only loyal agents of the dynasty are allowed to obtain high offices in the Bank and our power remains intact. Obvious private monopolies are always the targets of sharp reformist agitators. Only the most paranoid, however, can see through the public facade to the private monopoly of the nationalized or quasi-nationalized Central Bank.
The Central Bank is the primary monopoly on which all our monopoly power depends. The occult power of the Central Bank to create money out of nothing is the fountainhead that fuels our far-flung financial and political empire. I will make a quick survey of a few of the ways this secret money power is brought to bear.
Basically, the power of our Central Bank flows from its control over the points of entry into the economy of new, inflationary money which it creates out of thin air. Ordinarily, bills of exchange, acceptances, private bonds, government bonds and other credit instruments are purchased by the Central Bank through specially privileged dealers in order to put the new money, often only checking accounting entries, into circulation. The dealers are allowed a large profit since they are fronts operated by our agents. Our purchase of government securities pleases the government, as our purchase of private debt pleases private debtors. As a quid pro quo to assure "good management" our agents are given directorships, managerial posts, and offices in the corporations and government's so benefited. As the addiction to the narcotic of inflationary easy credit grows and grows we demand more and more control of our dependent entourage of governments and corporations. When we finally end the easy credit to "combat inflation" the enterprises and governments either fall directly into our hands, bankrupt, or are rescued at the price of total control.
Also, we ruling bankers control the flow of money in the economy through the wide authority of the Central Bank to license, audit, and regulate private banks. Banks that loan to interests outside the loyal entourage are "audited" by the Central Bank and found to be dangerously overextended. Just a hint of insolvency from the respected Central Bank authorities is enough to cause a run on the disobedient bank or at least dry up its vital lines of credit. Soon the banking establishment learns to follow the hints and nods of your father's agents at the Central Bank automatically.
Further, the periodic cycles of easy money and tight money that we initiate through our control of the Central Bank cause corresponding fluctuations in all markets. Our inner circle knows in advance the timing of these cycles and, therefore reaps windfall profits by speculating in commodity, stock, currency, gold, and bond markets. Monopolistic stock and commodity Exchanges are a vital adjunct to our power made possible by our Central Bank power. We do not allow a fair auction market to exist, but make a great show of "tough" government regulation to create a false sense of confidence among small investors. With the aid of our regulatory charade and financial power we are able to maintain Exchanges tailored to our entourage's need to manipulate stock prices at the expense of independent investors. Our privileged specialists on the floors of our Exchanges, aided by the propaganda of our financial press and brokerage houses, continually play on naivete and greed to drain the savings of the unwary into our coffers. The stock, commodities, and securities held in trading accounts by the Exchange and brokerage houses provides us with a clout far beyond our own actual holdings with which we can manipulate prices and win proxy fights for corporate takeovers.
Little danger to our lucrative racket exists from public-spirited regulation. Our manipulations are so complex that only the most brilliant experts could comprehend them. To most economists our Exchange operations appear to be helpful efforts to "stabilize" the market. We ruling bankers, if able to keep peace among ourselves, become richer and richer as time passes without the annoyance of exerting productive effort of benefit to others.
The next speaker, Professor G. will discuss the secrets of social legislation and policy that do so much to cement our power.
6. PROFESSOR G. ON SOCIAL AND BUSINESSLEGISLATION AND POLICY ~
"There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the direction indicated by money, and for the time being permitted by money--and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact." --- Oswald Spengler: "Decline of the West"
"Also at the (SDS) convention, men from Business International Roundtables... tried to buy up some radicals. These are the world's leading industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives
are going to go... We were also offered Esso (Rockefeller) money. They want us to make a lot of radical commotion so they can look more in the center as they move to the left." --- James Kunen: "The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary"
The danger to our system clearly is not that the "people" will spontaneously rise up and dispossess us. The "people" never initiate anything. All successful movements are led from the top, usually without the knowledge of the movement, by men like your father with vast resources and brilliant plans. The real danger arises in the upper-middle classes. Occasionally, these people make vast fortunes through some brilliant technological innovation in their business or through the favor of local politicians that escape our influence. Because of their ignorance of the reality of our power, however, the new rich usually fall easily into our hands. For instance, they seldom realize until too late that the dozens of loans they may owe to apparently independent banks can be called simultaneously with a mere nod from your father. Graver danger is presented by those whose enterprises are so successful as to be self-financing. Since the advent of the corporate income tax truly self-financing corporations are extremely rare. Most disquieting is when these upstarts acquire the covert or open support and advice of your father's major international antagonists. This is particularly dangerous in countries with long democratic traditions where it is difficult to make our arbitrary rulings stick.
The best solution is to enact comprehensive taxes and business regulations in the name of the common good. Such measures reduce the incidence of significant upstart competition to manageable levels. This policy, of course, strangles innovation and productivity. Reduction of the GNPs in countries under your father's control would be acceptable in the interests of secure power under the pretext of conservation, ecology, or no-growth stability except that if carried too far your father's clout vis-a-vis his international rivals would be impaired. The most difficult problem for the money lord is determining the level of social and economic freedom he dares allow for the sake of his international power. Only method is to maintain a home base of carefully monitored, relative freedom on which to base the economic and military strength required to maintain an empire of totalitarian dictatorships abroad. The following measures, however, are found necessary by nearly all money lords:
1. Steeply Graduated Income Tax ~ Income tax does not affect us because our money was accumulated before the tax was imposed and most of it is now safely protected in our network of tax exempt foundations. Foundation income and capital can legally be used to finance the bulk of our social, economic, literary, and even political propaganda. In a pinch it is easily diverted to illegal uses. Expensive "studies" required by our profitable economic operations can be legitimately financed through foundations.
To the middle classes, however, income tax makes life into an endless treadmill. Even the most productive find themselves unable to accumulate significant capital. They are forced into the clutches of our Central Bank entourage for injections of the inflationary credit which we are privileged to create out of nothing. The self-financing wealth of the legendary 19th Century robber barons and early Twentieth Century tycoons is no longer possible. Although your grandfather owed his start to just those wide-open conditions, he was among the first of the super-rich to advocate the erection of the tax wall that is now in place. Please note that in democratic countries eternal vigilance is required to prevent our tax shield from being riddled with loop holes by conniving legislators, who are usually of the tax oppressed, upper-middle class origins themselves.
2. Business Regulation ~ When upstarts slip through our financial tentacles and tax shields, perhaps with the aid of outsiders, a second line of defense becomes vital licensing in the crucial area of broadcasting has proven particularly necessary. This makes serious upstart-led mass political challenge impossible. Harassment by bureaucrats armed with arbitrary and voluminous industrial safety regulations is a new and increasingly effective technique. Security registration requirements, "to protect the small investor," can cause fatal delays in an upstart's ability to raise capital on the stock market. Ecological considerations are easily perverted to stymie the plans of those who would upset the stability of our carefully planned system.
Anti-trust law, however, is our ultimate weapon. The handy doctrine of "pure and perfect" competition which we have fostered in our universities is ideally suited to convict any successful competitor, at our discretion. If the competitor charges a lower price than ours he is accused of "unfair competition" aimed at driving us from the field to impair future competition. If he asks the same price as we, he is open to the charge of collusion. If he charges more than us, he is obviously exploiting his "monopoly power" at the expense of the consumer. Fortunately, the rulings of our bureaucrats are so complicated that even when successfully appealed in court many years elapse before the ruling is rendered. By then our goals are often achieved through harassment.
Product quality, safety, and testing regulations are excellent methods by which we insulate our established industries from potential competition. Beside raising the costs of entry into the auto business, for instance, the cost of "safety" can be passed to the consumer along with a healthy profit mark-up.
3. Subsidies, Tariffs, and Foreign Aid ~ Although direct subsidies can occasionally be procured for our entourage of corporations by appealing to the masses' desire to preserve jobs, this exploitive technique is usually too obvious. Tariffs are easily passed, but lead to retaliation against our foreign holdings. Foreign aid and soft (sure to be defaulted) government guaranteed loans, however, fill the bill perfectly under modern conditions. Foreign aid maintains our empire of foreign dictators abroad while providing guaranteed, highly profitable sales to our corporations at home base. Foreign aid should always be contingent on the purchase of goods, usually military hardware, that only our entourage of firms can provide. Few have the courage to oppose such altruistic aid to the "starving masses" of the "third world."
4. Centralization of Power ~ Real division of power between national, state, and local government is dangerous to our system. When local politicians have real autonomy, even in limited spheres, they can do much to enable upstarts to challenge our power. Our program is to bring all levels of government under our sway through such innovations as federal aid, revenue sharing, high federal taxation, and regional government.
5. Alliance with the Lower Classes ~ In order to keep our valuable regulatory machinery in place and under our control we must have the mass support of the numerous lower classes against our vigorous, but scarce middle-class rivals. The best method is to provide the lower classes with subsidies at the expense of the middle class. This creates a mutual hatred that prevents the middle class from appealing effectively to the lower classes for support. Social security, free health care, unemployment benefits, and direct welfare payments, while doing nothing for us directly, create a dependent class whose support for our critical measures can easily be made part of a package deal. Please note also that the major labor unions began with our financing and are led to this day by leaders of our choosing. No one can rise to or remain at the top of a rough and tumble union without our financial backing. In spite of their rebellious rhetoric, bought union leaders are the source of our power over the management of firms with widely held stock. Unions are the ultimate weapon for destroying otherwise invulnerable, self-financing rivals. Further, downward flexibility of wages and prices which obtains without widespread unionization would increase the ability of the economy to survive without our aid during the economic crises we create.
Bread and circuses are as useful today as in Roman times for mobilizing the mob against our staid adversaries. Next, Professor D. will describe our education policies.
7. PROFESSOR D. ON THE ROLE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION ~
"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk . . . The task we set before ourselves is a beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just as they are. So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way in the home, in shop, and on the farm." --- The objective of Rockefeller "philanthropies" stated by him and Gates in Occasional Letter No. 1 of Rockefeller's General Education Board.
"A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government --- whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation --- in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body." --- John Stuart Mill
In order to maintain our system of power, the institution of universal public education is indispensable. The anarchy of private education in which any manner of dangerous ideas could be spread cannot be tolerated. Thus we make private education financially impossible to all but the few mostly the elite offspring of our financial entourage, by means of burdensome taxation and regulation. The primary purpose of public education is to inculcate the idea that our crucial institutions of coercion and monopoly were created for the public good by popular national heroes to blunt the past power of the malefactors of great wealth. Crucial is to create the impression that, although the people have been exploited in the past, today the wealthy are at the mercy of an all-powerful government which is firmly in the hands of the people or do-gooding liberals.
For those of more sophistication who reject this Pollyanna view of reality, we promote the "liberal reformer mentality" which holds that a new era of reform is on the verge of crushing forever the last vestiges of money lordism. Of course, the reforms, after taking shape as a bewildering myriad of regulatory agencies and taxes, are found to be ineffective in subordinating our power to the popular will, whereupon we stir up another era of progressive reform.
Our contrived Left-Right spectrum which our compulsory education helps to make universal is valuable in assuring that this charade does not get out of hand. The Pollyannas in the middle are neither dangerous nor useful in this endeavor. What is needed is a feeble, but persistent right-conservatism to moderate and emasculate the liberal reforms. Conservatives tend to resist all the advances in centralized, government power that we lead the liberals to see as necessary in order to totally end the "undemocratic" power of money in society. Conservatism would rather promote a "pluralism" of competing interests in which money is the medium of competition than risk the excesses of "big government," When "liberal" reforms show signs of exceeding our intentions and actually threaten to place our key institutions in the hands of the people, we can always count on the conservatives to defend our power under the illusion that they are defending the legitimate rights of "free-enterprise capitalists." On the rare occasions when conservatives call for subjecting our enterprises to laissez-faire competition, we can count on the dominant liberal reformers to insist on more government interference, unaware of our desire for such, in effect, self-administered regulation.
The Right has such a fear of the Left's dream of democratic collectivism and the Left such a hatred for what it sees as the Right's elitist, rugged individualism that there is little danger that they will ever join forces to overturn our government-backed monopolies even though we violate the ideals of both left and right.
Centralization of control at the state, or preferably national level, assists in building the climate of opinion we require in public education. Failing to obliterate local control, other methods nearly as effective are available. Our overwhelming financial clout in the publishing industry can induce relatively uniform textbook selection. Further leverage can be created by promoting teacher colleges and teaching machines. National teacher's associations and unions are also an excellent power base from which to foster our programs of indoctrination.
With our great influence in publishing and publicity we are able to, selectively popularize educational theorists whose views are incidentally beneficial, compatible, or at least not in conflict with our own goals. This way we obtain sincere, energetic activists to propagate our desires without having to reveal our motives or even existence. We do not want an educational system that produces hard-driving individuals bent on amassing great wealth and power. Therefore, we discourage education that would develop the potential powers of students to their fullest. "Liberal" education that stresses knowledge for its own sake or even sophistry and sterile mental gymnastics is of no danger to us. "Relevant," vocational, or career-oriented education also poses no danger to our power. Education that prepares students to accept a cog-like existence in our military-industrial-social-welfare-regulation complex is ideal. Progressive education with its stress on "social adjustment" also produces the conformity we require of our subjects. Emphasis on competitive sports may produce a certain amount of disruptive competitiveness among the participants, but primarily has the effect of creating life-long voyeuristic spectators who will enthusiastically sublimate their competitiveness into endless hours of following college and professional sports on the boob tube. Space spectaculars and dramatic political infighting are also marvelous diversions with which to occupy the masses.
Anyone seeking social change will gravitate to the field of education. Our strategy is simple: Let only those succeed whose influence would be compatible with our power. Encourage all who would develop the passive or receptive mode of existence. Discourage all who promote the aggressive or active capacities. Build a great cult of salvation through endless education, touting it as the "democratic" path to success Deride the frontal approach to success of the "outmoded' rugged individualist.
Before yielding the floor to Professor X., who will discuss the role of secret societies and prestigious clubs, I would like to comment on the demise of religious education as a vehicle for social control. Religion, in its time, was a remarkable weapon for inculcating subservience, altruism, and self-abnegation among our subjects. We did not give up this weapon voluntarily. Your grandfather, for one, supported the Baptist faith well after most finance capitalists had turned wholly to secular ideologies. However, a trend toward rationality in human affairs plods along inexorably quite outside the reach of our power. Only in our totalitarian dictatorships can this trend be quashed entirely. In the semi-open societies in which our money power is based, the forces of reason can only be impeded and diverted. Some have theorized that, eventually, widespread rational egoism will overturn our order. I am confident that secular faiths and just plain confusion will suffice to sustain our power for many centuries to come.
8. PROFESSOR X. ON PRESTIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS AND SECRET SOCIETIES ~
"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the
Pulitzer Prize." --- Upton Sinclair
"It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe--the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries--is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads." --- Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), July 14, 1856
In preserving and protecting our grasp on nations we must exert veiled control of all major opinion molding associations and especially prestigious clubs which attract the leaders in various fields and do so much to influence the dispensing of commanding positions in government and business. Associations of the leading scholars, businessmen, writers, religionists, artists, bureaucrats, newsmen, ideologists, publishers, broadcasters, and professional men as well as special interest groups representing laborers, farmers, consumers, racial minorities, and so on must be subtly kept under the broad limits of our sway. Since membership dues and fees are never sufficient to support their ambitious activities, voluntary, non-profit organizations are easy prey for the nearly unlimited financial resources of our entourage. However, our real motive, to further our political and economic power, must not be revealed in the process. Our policies must be laboriously rationalized in terms compatible with prevalent ideologies and moralities or the material advantage of the groups involved. Leaders of such groups are remarkably quick to accept our rationalizations when financial support is extended. We engage in outright bribery only as a last resort, and then, only in extreme cases. Our long-range interests are better served by temporarily postponing a policy victory than by risking exposure of our power by attempting outright bribery. In fact, clumsy bribery and intimidation attempts are characteristic of our foolish nouveau-riche opponents.
As an example, if we decide that federal rather than state chartering or licensing of corporations would further our control over the economy, we would not simply order politicians and opinion leaders to support our desires. Corporations not relishing central control would be suspicious that something was afoot and might expose our plot. Our strategy would be as follows:
1. Sacrifice one of our less competent management teams in a well-publicized corporate scandal in order to focus attention on the "widespread problem of corporate corruption under current, lax regulations."
2. Through well-funded agents, thrust into the publicity spotlight intellectuals or groups who already support federal licensing as a piecemeal step toward socialism. (One can find pre-existing supporters for nearly any measure with sufficient effort.)
3. After the issue is before the public, offer to support through foundations the "objective" study of the federal licensing proposals being discussed with an eye toward proposing legislation. Often, simultaneous support for studies by disreputable, irrational groups who will oppose the proposal is useful as well. Provide no platform for
well-reasoned opposition.
4. When a ground swell of support appears to be building provide the interested lobbying organizations with plenty of funds to grease the palms of politicians. The enactment of the federal licensing law thus appears as the will of society. Last-ditch opposition automatically appears mean spirited, obstructionist, reactionary, and paranoid, serving only to discredit our opposition.
In our fully developed system of finance capitalist thought control and promotion control, our hierarchy of prestigious associations is capped by a single prestige society: The Council of World Affairs. This organization is a front for the secret society of which your father is head. This secret society is made up of the people who have spoken, plus six others not present. You are replacing Professor Q. who is to retire shortly. Eventually you will replace your father. We thirteen are your father's advisors and only confidants. All other agents are misled as to the bulk of our objectives and motives. Their knowledge is restricted to the details required by their assignments. The penalty for disloyalty is death.
The Council is invaluable for propagating our policy decisions to our entourage without revealing our motives and strategy. In many instances, policy can he successfully sold to our entourage and thus transmitted to the multitudes by merely airing it along with appropriate rationalizations in a single awe-inspiring session of the Council. The informal power of the Council is such that our policy manipulations are usually attainable without the clumsy exercises in brute power that invariably snag the independent power seekers. The Council is at the heart of what is called the Establishment and we are at the heart of the Council.
At the Council's inception, we worked hard to attract the successful of all fields with all the prestige that our money power could buy. We had to work hard convincing the independent, self-made Council members to move in harmony with our policy objectives. We had many failures. Now everything is changed. Membership is no longer a reward for success as much as it is a prerequisite for major success. Without Council membership only the most outstanding can achieve national prominence. With membership, glaring mediocrities, with the "right" attitudes, achieve prominence. In fact, mediocrities are much more adapted to propagating our policy rationalizations and less likely to detect and oppose our ulterior motives. A power lusting mediocrity is not likely to judge his benefactors too harshly or inquire diligently into the nature of the power structure that brought him what he fears was undeserved success. The vanity of even idealistic, committed humanitarians militates against such a course.
The Council is now a giant employment agency of loyalists ready to parrot our public line from the commanding posts of government, foundations, broadcasting, industry, banking, and publishing. Although Council members are encouraged to take sides and bicker over the diversionary issues we create to entertain and enfeeble the populace, their solidarity in defending our power structure, root and branch, when pressed is a sight to behold! And to think that most see themselves as righteous defenders of the public good while they dismiss whispered rumors of our power structure as "kooky paranoia."
Classical secret societies with elaborate circles within circles no longer play a major role in finance capitalist power structures. Most wide membership secret societies have degenerated into middle class excuses for escaping the wife and kids once a month for the company of men. But secret societies were a major weapon of our bourgeoisie forebearers in their struggle with the old feudal order of kings and princes. Under authoritarian despotism of the old style, the secret society was the only place a free-thinking man could express himself. Through threats of exposure, loyalty oaths, patronage, deception, and rewards we bound such malcontents into a fierce force for our revolution. The multitude of degrees, occult mumbo-jumbo, and vague humanitarianism concealed the real goals of our secret societies from the bulk of the membership. The roles of the "Illuminated" Masonic Lodges in European revolutions were decisive in our final victory over the old order.
I now yield the floor to Professor Y. who will discourse on the real "secret societies" the Modern Finance Capitalist State: the National Security Institutions and Intelligence Agencies.
9. PROFESSOR Y. ON COVERT OPERATIONS AND INTELLIGENCE ~
In our fully developed state-capitalist systems we have found absolute control of governmental intelligence gathering and covert operations to be vital.
Besides providing a valuable tool in our struggle with rival dynasties, such control is now an integral and necessary part of our day-to-day operations. Large intelligence communities are inevitable, given the system of all encompassing governments which we have imposed upon the world