Israel, A Beachhead in the Middle East: From European Colony to US Power Projection Platform

by Stephen Gowans

Washington has poured billions into Israel’s economy and military and, since 1967, Israel has undertaken innumerable operations on Washington’s behalf against states that reject US supremacy and economic domination. The self-appointed Jewish state has become a watch-dog capable of sufficiently punishing neighboring countries discourteous towards the West. Stephen Gowans challenges the specious argument that Israel controls US foreign policy, tracing the development of the self-declared Jewish state through its efforts to suppress regional liberation movements integrated into the US empire as a pro-imperialist Sparta of the Middle East.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Israel, United States

290 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2019

About the author

Stephen Gowans is an independent political analyst whose main interest is on who influences foreign policy in the United States. His book, Washington’s Long War on Syria (Baraka Books, 2017), was widely acclaimed.

Reviews

[Nick Girvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ALMOST gave this a 5. It’s packed full of super vital factual information when it comes to understanding the past 100 or so years in the Middle East / west Asia. This paints a great picture of how Zionism was birthed in European antisemitism to justify the existence of a Jewish state, and basically every adjacent war spurred by old British/French colonial powers. These would then move to how the US co-opted the project for power projection in the Middle East, like the title says.

Matter of fact, as integral as Israel is in this book, and while it is the largest talking point, I almost think it would have worked better as a general Middle East book. It does a good job at redirecting the attention back to Israel as it dives into Nasser, Saddam, and the likes, however I almost think this could have benefited from either taking some of that out and focusing more on Israel/Palestine, or amping up those talking points and making it evenly about the Middle East.

That alone can’t take my rating from 5 to 4, however I do take issue with the high regards Gowans gives to Saddam. I understand the point he was making fully, but I don’t think Saddam ever really wanted to, or tried to, align with Marxism. Socialism, in some ways, but I can’t really agree with some of his takes on the Iraqi leader outside of the general point of him being no worse than, say, Churchill.

But overall, this was a great read loaded with good information, and I’d encourage anybody interested in exploring this topic to give this a read, especially with Israel and Palestine being back in the spotlight here in the west.

[Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gowans does a great job at being very thorough yet very concise. In a mere 200-ish pages he provides a ton of context to the state of Israel in the middle east, its US backing, its imperialist ideology, and the tensions arising from its existence.

Fun game: take a drink for every time you read the word "quisling."

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been getting into arguments with people on Facebook recently about US culpability in the genocide occurring in Gaza. Their argument is a rather simple one – that although the US is supplying the weapons and providing guidance in directing those weapons to their targets, it is wrong to say that this is a US genocide – since it is Israel that is prosecuting this war and the US is merely acting in a way consistent with its belief that Israel has a right to defend itself – even if the US does not fully support how it is going about doing that defence.

This grew out of other arguments I had been having with them about Harris’s unconditional support of Israel during the election – which I still believe cost her the election. Their argument was that the Israel lobby in the US is so powerful that if she had made her true feelings about Gaza clear that it would have guaranteed she would have lost the election and been seen as antisemitic.

This book was written before the current crisis – in 2019 – and so, what it has to say about the US involvement is particularly interesting, since it is not impacted by the latest news. That is, if it was impossible to see the US as an innocent bystander back then, it is even more so now.

Over the last few days, with the betrayal of Ukraine, many people are saying things like ‘nothing about Ukraine without the Ukrainians’. I’ve no problem with this. But it does highlight that this is anything but a universal principle. If the history of Palestine is about anything, it has been a history of every major decision being made about that being made without the input (and often even the consideration) of the Palestinians. Palestinians have been denied existence or, even if people admit to them being there and having been there for a considerable time, they are considered to be so child-like as to not be deserving of having any right to contribute to the determination of their own futures.

This goes back to the British mandate and the decision to create in Palestine a home for European Jews. The author makes it clear that this was a conscious policy based on racism towards Jews. The removal of Jews from Europe was seen as beneficial, not only because of the very longstanding hatred shown towards them, but also because Jews were understood to be troublemakers. One of the things that was understood to make them troublemakers was that they were understood to be a ‘people without a nation’. This fully contradicted the nationalist fervour of the age. It was why Hitler was so opposed to them. The connection between a people and the soil was understood to be fundamental – and since the Jews lacked this connection, they were understood to be essentially degenerate. Worse, not only did many Jews feel like outsiders in the nations they occupied – hardly surprising, since the locals tended to blame them for every hardship faced and kill them due to this – but many Jews therefore believed themselves to be cosmopolitan – citizens of the world, rather than of individual nations. The attraction to Marxism and proletarian internationalism, then, was also hardly surprising. At one point in this the author claims that up to half of all communists were Jews at some point. Removing Jews to Palestine ticked lots of boxes – getting rid of a hated people while simultaneously undermining the left.

But, as Hegel liked to say, history is nothing if not contradictory. The other attraction for having a Jewish state in the Middle East was that it would be an essentially European outpost in a part of the world that was becoming increasingly strategic. And a difficult part of the world too. The problem being that it looked very much as if it could be monocultural – speaking more or less the same language and populated with people who saw themselves as more or less the same people. And although not nearly as advanced as Europe, this unity could very easily become a threat to European dominance over the region. The author spends a lot of time discussing how the rule of divide and conquer was applied to ensure divisions were created across the Middle East – particularly in heightening the tensions between the Shia and Sunni, but also by installing leaders that otherwise had no right to rule in places such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and so on. Tensions were also stoked with the Kurds, the world’s largest ethnic people without a homeland. Putting a Jewish, European state in the midst of all this was seen as another way to stoke disaffection – something the early Zionists understood and cultivated.

The US was rather late to this party – but they have not really changed the rulebook. As oil grew in importance to the world economy, and even though the US had, for a long time, more than enough oil to be getting on with, it was understood that Arab oil needed to be controlled by US corporate interests. This has been a driving force behind much of US policy in the Middle East. From regime change in Iran and Iraq to the unquestioning support of Israel, control of the natural resources of the region has long been the main concern. And as people have repeatedly said, Israel is an unsinkable US aircraft carrier in the heart of the region.

The point, then, is not that the US is acting in the interests of Israel – but rather is using Israel to further its own ends in the region. That those ends also suit Israel is merely a side benefit. The driving force is not the Israel lobby, but rather the lobby of corporate America. At one point in this the author points out that the Israel lobby is actually rather small when compared with other lobby groups in the US – take the NRA, for example – but the Israel lobby has so much power, not because of the money it provides both parties, but rather because its aims match those of US foreign policy.

I’m a bit ashamed to have never really known very much about Saddam Hussein. I had been too willing to accept that he was the ‘butcher of Baghdad’. It is clear that he was ruthless, but in comparison with other rulers, probably no more so than might be expected. He did a lot to further the rights of the poor in Iraq, was definitely sectarian, sought to have Arab oil for the Arabs and introduced laws that particularly benefited women. He also did much to improve literacy in Iraq. Whatever you can say about Iraq when he was in power – it is a million times worse now that it has been ‘liberated’ by US forces. Much the same can be said about Libya, and perhaps soon enough, Iran too, and certainly Syria. The west has specialised in replacing sectarian leaders with religious fanatics, much to the cost of the region as a whole and to world peace and security. Afghanistan is another case in point.

It is perhaps going too far to say that the US expected or even welcomed the ethnic cleansing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and now the beginnings of this in the West Bank – however, it is clear that they did nothing to stop this and did much to facilitate it. As I said to people on Facebook, if two children are fighting and I provide one of them with a gun, then hold their arm up to point at the other child, push away the parents coming to protect their child, and then aim the gun at the heart of the other child – saying, oh yes, but I didn’t pull the trigger, the child did, does nothing to reduce my own moral responsibility for the action performed. None of which could have happened without my active involvement. As such, the moral judgement needs to fall equally upon myself as upon those I assisted in committing this crime against humanity. And now we are seeing Trump say Gaza has beautiful potential as a resort for the wealthy to holiday, that as a real estate developer he can see how emptying it of its noisome population would be of great benefit to the region – not least since he sees it as becoming US property. The colonial instincts are never too far below the surface – although, in this case, they are right on the surface, couldn’t, in fact, be any more clear.

This book is particularly good since it gives a context for what is going on in Palestine, a history of an intention that is now being realised. That makes this book invaluable reading. I can’t recommend it too highly.

[Douglas Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most explicitly pro-Marxist Leninist author that has written about Israel that I've read so far. Gowans, already writing his succinct "Patriots, Traitors and Empires" about the DPRK, is no nonsense about imperialism, he gives the facts of the matter straight up, like ripping off a bandaid. While some may chafe at this style due to their own brainwashing by western media, to me both are like a breath of fresh air in a sea of garbage about Zionism and the Middle East.

Gowans traces the history of Zionism back to its initial roots in the late 1800s, and how it developed over time with WW1 and the Nakba, while then tracing the various figures who were in Zionism's way, Nasser, Gaddafi, Saddam, Assad and bin Laden, while even tracing Israel's collaboration with Al Qaeda and ISIS, and England/France's own divide and conquer strategy of splitting Syria into various different states on religious lines.

While not particularly detailed, I believe that this is actually a strength for this book, in that it quickly gives an overview without any of the distracting liberal garbage that the west heaps on the situation that confuses as to who the main culprits are, which is western finance capital and their interests in oil and geopolitical staging against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

[Pushon Bhattacharya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Passionately written with lots of important info on the US-Israeli relationship, but a bit too rosy in its description of Arab tyrants.

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I have ever read on the politics of the Middle East. I learnt a lot and found it the right level of challenge; I loved it.