By ALEXANDRE ARAGÃO DE ALBUQUERQUE*
The open and indiscriminate US support for Israel shows the imperialist greed in the insatiable quest to maintain the usurpation of the wealth of nations
The main actors of the post-World War II international system, USA and USSR, were fully aware of the cost of the decision to create the State of Israel by endorsing the invasion and destruction of Palestine, causing a generalized revolt in the Arab world, deeply resentful of Western imperialism in region. The two powers, through their presidents – Truman and Stalin – agreed in the UN vote in support of the founding of Israel, even if Stalin later revised his original position.
Why did the international system allow this unusual event to take place, which implied the expulsion of the native Arab population from Palestine forever, in order to make Jewish Zionism viable? It is the necessary question to seek to understand a little of world geopolitics, the massacre of Palestinians by Zionism and, derivatively, the 2016 coup in Brazil.
In 1897, Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist and playwright, considered the creator of political Zionism, organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel (Switzerland), with the participation of 200 delegates from various countries. At this Congress the Zionist objective was defined: to guarantee the Jewish people a national place [State] in Palestine. In the Congress program, they decide for: 1) Acquisition of the right of the Jewish people to colonize Palestine; 2) Promotion of Jewish colonization in Palestine on a large scale; 3) Creation of an organization to unite Jews around the world in support of Zionism.
In 1901, the Jewish National Fund was created, centralizing collection for colonization, defining that land acquisitions should be the inalienable property of the Jewish people.
And in 1905, at the Seventh Zionist Congress, it was definitively decided that only Palestine was of interest to the movement, no other region of the world. The ideological campaign released to the world, starting this year, was summed up in the slogan said for the first time by Israel Zangwill: “a land without people for a people without land”.
Predicting the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the colonialist powers of the Triple Entente - Russia, France, Great Britain - winners of the First War, established negotiations for the division between them of the Ottoman territories in the Middle East. The British Empire controlled Palestine. In 1917, the Zionist Organization would obtain the “colonization letter” from the British government, through the Balfour Declaration¸ addressed to Lord Edmond Rothschild, one of the richest men in the world, financier of governments and one of the main sponsors of the Zionist cause. Since the approval of this declaration by the US government, the Zionist Organization has focused on the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine. According to the UN, in 1922 there were 750.000 people in Palestine, of whom 90% were Arabs.
British colonialism always ignored the conditions of the peoples it subjugated, viewing them from a xenophobic point of view as non-peoples, backward groupings, liable to be subjected to its imperialist power that usurped the riches of the colonies it exploited. European imperialism had already implanted in the conscience of its citizens the horror that, outside Europe, any territory was susceptible to being invaded by a European State.
It was no different with Palestine. The Balfour Declaration created the bases for the installation of the “British Mandate over Palestine”, so the Zionists had the opportunity to form their institutions through the Jewish Agency, an organ foreseen in the Mandate text itself, which became the entity representative of the Zionist Organization in Palestine. The objective was to create in Palestine a “European pillar” that would guarantee the existence of the Jewish state against Asia. Therefore, for being inserted in the imperialist strategic framework, political Zionism required the consistent and effective support of the western powers.
A memorandum from Arthur Balfour to Lord Curzon reads: “The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, right or wrong, for better or for worse, is rooted in ancient traditions and current needs of far deeper importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700.000 Arabs who now inhabit these ancient lands.”
With the decline of the British Empire, deeply weakened economically with the Second World War, its external trade was undermined due to the strong growth of imports that doubled its external debt, leaving behind a geopolitical vacuum in the Middle East, which was completely occupied by the United States. for the issue of oil and foreign trade, as well as facing the presence of the USSR in the region, in the Cold War clearly defined in the post-war period, fueled by the “Truman Doctrine” of hostility to Russia, hardening its policy in the region to prevent the Soviet expansion, securing US military bases and oil concessions.
Washington already had in mind the depletion of its domestic oil reserves and the strong determination to have alternative sources of supply that in its understanding could not remain in foreign hands. In the interwar period, US companies managed to take over part of the oil industry in Iraq and Kuwait, as well as exclusive concessions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This posture intensified with the Second World War, with the perception of the fundamental importance of oil in war.
But the open and indiscriminate support of the US for the creation of the State of Israel, fueled by the American Zionists, in an evident hostility towards the Arab world, placed in contradiction the US foreign policy towards the Middle East, because it favored the emergence of an Israel much greater than that of the former. the resolution of the partition of the UN, creating in the Arabs the frustration and the revolt for the humiliation suffered and for the spoliation imposed by the western powers, under the leadership of the USA.
On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was founded. According to Truman, “the newest democracy in the world”. In this same period, the 1948 War began, and the Zionists had been preparing for it for some years, heavily financed by the US government and by American Zionists.
The Zionist Organization adopted two strategies in this War: 1) Occupy as much territory as possible to redraw the borders determined by the UN; 2) Carry out an ethnic extermination in the territory. Whole Arab villages were massacred, causing a mass flight of the Arab population, who left their homes without taking any belongings. By 1949 the conflict had already produced 726.000 Palestinian refugees. Those who tried to return to their homes had their properties, residences, crops and industries confiscated by Israel, without receiving any compensation. In addition to the genocide of defenseless civilians, the State of Israel usurped land and properties, with a clear intention of eliminating the Arab population of its State.
It never hurts to remember that the Palestinians, who did not participate in the holocaust of the Second War, were forced to bear the responsibility of the Jewish refugees. But the State of Israel officially declared that it did not feel responsible for Palestinian refugees from the war it sponsored.
In this month of May 2021, the former Brazilian Foreign Minister and former Minister of Defense, diplomat Celso Amorim, in the Panel “Petrobrás and the Hybrid War” categorically stated that there was an underestimation of the Brazilian State due to the triggering of the Hybrid War triggered by the USA from the moment of the discoveries of the Brazilian Pre-Salt, as well as by the leadership of Brazil with the political articulation with the BRICS. The former minister pointed out that several studies point to the fundamental weapons of the Hybrid War against Brazil not being the missiles of traditional wars, but the national business corporate media, the most reactionary structure of Brazilian capitalists, when intermediating and defending international capitalist interests to the detriment of national sovereignty.
Amorim also recalled that the creation of UNASUR and CELAC had already aroused concern in the US government. But Brazil's determination to join the BRICS was not tolerated due to the presence of the historic rivals – Russia and China – of US imperialism.
According to the document “2020 Annual Report by Department of Health & Human Services – USA”, on page 48, one can see very clearly the breadth of the Hybrid War strategy denounced by Amorim. The document reveals that in 2020, Donald Trump's US used diplomatic relations (with Chancellor Ernesto Araújo) in South America to mitigate the efforts of states such as Russia and China that are working to increase their influence in the region "to the detriment of of the security of the United States”. Among the examples, one can highlight the successful use of the US Health Attaché office in Brazil to persuade him to reject the Russian vaccine Sputinik V against Covid-19, in a country that already has 440 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. coronavirus.
Therefore, whether in the Middle East or in Latin America, and more specifically in Brazil, one cannot underestimate the new war tactics of the US to maintain its imperialist greed in the insatiable quest to maintain the usurpation of the wealth of nations. There is an urgent need to rescue the political project of Brazilian articulation in the international scenario, aiming at a multipolar design of international forces.
Alexandre Aragão de Albuquerque Master in Public Policy and Society from the State University of Ceará (UECE).
References
ALBUQUERQUE, Alexandre Aragão de. https://segundaopiniao.jor.br/aula-magna-de-um-estadista/
GOMES, Rejane. The question of Palestine and the founding of Israel. Masters dissertation. University of São Paulo, June 2001.
MIDDLE EAST MONITOR. https://www.monitordooriente.com/20210507-amorim-participacao-no-brics-e-pre-sal-trouxeram-a-guerra-hibrida-para-o-brasil/
USA. Department of Health Human Services. 2020 Annual Report. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2020-annual-report.pdf
