Let’s talk about the Golan Heights
by Philip Roddis
Yesterday an Al-Monitor piece by Akiva Eldar contrasted Netanyahu’s success in getting Trump out of the Iran deal, and ‘recognising’ Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with his failure to pull off the same with Europe. While that contrast forms the thrust of his article, Eldar finds time to work in an aside on the Golan Heights:
Here, too, [Netanyahu] can take credit for a major victory: Last month’s annual State Department report on human rights around the world replaced “occupied territories” with “Israel, the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza.” If there’s no occupation, Israel can do whatever it wants in these territories, including theft of Palestinian lands, abuse of its residents and even deportation. If there is no occupation, Palestinians can be uprooted to make way for Jewish settlements, the 1993 Oslo Accord can be erased from the history books and such trivialities as international law can be ignored. After all, when Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Iranian agreement, he was showing the world that international pacts signed by his country are at best a recommendation.
That’s strong language from Eldar, a former senior columnist with the Israeli liberal newspaper, Haaretz. So let’s take a quick history primer. The Golan is a seven hundred square mile plateau with the Yarmouk River to the south, Sea of Galilee and Israel to the west and Syria to the east. Wiki tells us that in Old testament times:
…the Golan was focus of a power struggle between the Kings of Israel and the Aramaeans based near modern-day Damascus. The Itureans, an Arab or Aramaic people, settled there in the 2nd century BCE and remained until the end of the Byzantine era. Jewish settlement in the region came to an end in 636 CE when it was conquered by Arabs under Umar ibn al-Khattāb. In the 16th century, the Golan was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and part of the Vilayet of Damascus until it was transferred to French control in 1918. When the mandate terminated in 1946, it became part of the newly independent Syrian Republic.
Between 1967 and the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights had become occupied and administered by Israel, whereas the eastern third had remained under control of the Syrian Arab Republic, with the UNDOF maintaining a 266 km buffer zone … Construction of Israeli settlements began in the remainder of the territory held by Israel .. until [Israel extended its] administration throughout the territory in 1981 .. UN Resolution 497 stated that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect.” Israel maintains it has a right to retain the Golan, citing UN Resolution 242, which calls for “safe and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force”. However, the international community rejects Israeli claims to title to the territory and regards it as sovereign Syrian territory.
The description of Syria’s assault as a ‘civil war’ aside, the above is uncontentious. It sheds light on Akiva Eldar’s unequivocal tone in that opening quote. As a liberal he is offended by “theft of Palestinian lands” and a power status quo in which “such trivialities as international law can be ignored”. But there’s another aspect to the Golan issue, one neither Al-Monitor nor mainstream media are speaking of.
The Golan has oil – billions of barrels of it says the Economist, more than in Saudi Arabia say others.
Unlike in Iraq and Libya, I haven’t seen oil grabs as a significant motive for the West’s assault, direct and by proxy, on Syria in the name of aiding a heroic and only slightly Islamist (foreign too, but let’s not be pedantic) resistance to tyranny. Oil is an aspect but less by its presence in Syria, modest to negligible, than in the matter of which pipeline will supply Europe, the world’s biggest energy market. Even then, the pipeline is not key to understanding Syria’s ordeal. It is pipped by bigger questions of US ability to maintain regional and even global hegemony in the face of threats from China’s One Belt One Road project, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and fast growing realisation in all sectors of Russian and Iranian society that the USA is not to be trusted, and that its untrustworthiness is not new to Donald Trump’s presidency.
But the picture changes when Syria is taken, as indeed it should be taken, to include the Golan. The presence of oil there first came to my attention in an Economist piece of 2015 which does not make the more oil than Saudi claim but does quote US based Genie Energy as suggesting, on the back of test drillings, an oil reservoir “with the potential of billions of barrels”.
In itself there’s something remarkable in the reporting, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, of an American Oil Corporation test drilling for oil in an area of Syria unlawfully administered by Israel. I’m minded of Stephen Gowans’ recent piece, quoted in full on this site under the heading Privatising Syria. But I digress.
Just over a month ago. Christina Lin wrote in Asia Times that:
Indeed, Israel has intensified its defense of the Golan. Last June, when a mortar shell landed in the Golan, the Israeli air force attacked Syrian army positions in the village of Samadanieh al Sharqiyah in Quneitra province. In February, after its F-16 crashed in Syria, Israeli airstrikes took out half of Syria’s air defense and fired ground-to-ground rockets from the Golan Heights. It also supports rebel groups as a buffer force to keep the Syrian army and Iran-backed Hezbollah at bay.
In itself, there’s nothing especially eyebrow-raising here. But context is all, and the title of Lin’s piece is Partition of Syria: US and Israel eye Golan Heights Oil. She also has this to say:
By maintaining a US military presence in Syria and partitioning the country into spheres of influence similar to China in the 19th century, it would facilitate Israeli annexation of the Golan and allow US/Israeli energy companies to exploit the oil reserves.
I wish I had the word power to express my depth of anger at the venality, deceit and hypocrisy of our rulers. The best I can do is say it as I see it, and explain what I see in terms of the interests of profit overriding all else. The suffering of the Syrian people, for instance. What, tell me, does that actually mean in the context of the Murdoch owned Sunday Times telling us stuff like this?
Oh, did I not say? Rupert Murdoch is on the Genie Energy board. As are Dick Cheney, Larry Summers and former CIA Director James Woolsey. See that 2015 Economist piece.
Couldn’t make it up, could you?
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Mailman here with comments in SyrPer re USAID vs REALAID:
Conglomera
Washington Couldn’t Beat Assad, So It Will Punish His People. By forming a “Coalition of the Vindictive” to withhold aid until a US controlled regime is installed. It’s ordinary Syrians who will suffer.
U.S. is doubling down on its failed campaign against Assad by mobilizing an international coalition to deny him and, more importantly, the Syrian people the tools to rebuild. The weapons in this battle are not F-15s or mortars but aid for reconstruction, international finance for the rehabilitation of Syria’s public and private infrastructure, and a crushing sanctions regime meant to sabotage the ability of Assad’s Syria and its decimated private sector to emerge from the ashes.
By Geoffrey Aronson • May 14, 2018
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washington-couldnt-beat-assad-so-it-will-punish-his-people/
+10 Reply
anti_republocrat
The US provides very little aid anywhere in the world that isn’t
1) a loan, and/or
2) earmarked a) for the purchase of US weapons, or b) payment to a US corporate contractor, or 3) skimmed by a US selected despot, or 4) administered by some US backed NGO or foundation that uses most of it for “administrative expenses.”
Thus, withholding US aid is a blessing. Russia and China, true humanitarians, will help.
+1
[vexard adds: Note the surname Aaron’s Son on the report, and that it appears in American Conservative. The desire for Justice and Charity is not the prerogative of members of a particular ethnic group, nor a particular political persuasion. The fake Left may have a point; there is a real Right that opposes them].
AZC war against Syria is turning into a premature war against Russia. I don’t think NATZO is ready for this; we running well behind schedule: Syria and Iran were to have been “taken out” by 2006. Russia has upset the U$ apple cart, and some European countries are beginning to wonder whether Uncle $cam is the right Leader for Europe.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EFhORWVFBUw&time_continue=3
The people of Europe DO NOT COUNT. Only the elites, TOTALLY controlled by the Zionists and their puppet hyper-power, the zombie ‘super-power’, the USA, matter, and they are 100% stooges of Eretz Yisrael-or else they will get the Corbyn treatment, or even, if necessary, the Arafat Method.
Trust me, it’s DEFINITELY all about the oil.
Bill Clinton euphemistically said it was, “the economy, stupid!”, but the economy means the oil.
The “United Nations Administered Area” ?
You mean that Misogynist wholly Sexually Corrupted institution (in every most horrific sense of being), that cannot even administer it’s OWN Administration .. ? !
You mean the same U.N. that could not even fill my Truck & T.bar Trailer with 2 Isotherm containers offered for FREE to fill and Ship with supplies to Jaffna, Sri Lanka, immediately after the Tsunami in 2004, where Genocide & rape were/(are?) constant & by their OWN forces, too ..
(I visited alone to verify with my own scared eyes & ears, & don’t scare easy , just before the Tsunami hit, where Leprosy / Hansons Disease lived on , likely still ! ! )
You mean the U.N. that is so heavily SECRET & CENSORED with rampant internal problems in terms of any Moral Humanity & Principle in Law, based in Switzerland (where I lived for 15 years) & New York, where financial corruption functions Secretly & Freely, daily to the highest levels of Banking, & who deal also with the Vatican Bank, never Audited ?
Of course I could continue to illuminate my own subjective opinions, from direct experience first hand, inc. photos of U.N. cooking utensils &&& piled up in an old hospital in Jaffna, whilst the Tamils were suffering complete discrimination, deprivation & marginalisation of the worst most tragic racist ‘U.N.kind’: but we must all bare in mind that the U.N. is a wholly anachronistic incapable & immoral institution and a facade for Zionist Goals, so corrupted to the core, that it is , and has proven itself to be, incapable of Administering & Applying its’ own Laws, Rules & Regulations internally & externally for many decades, not least on the Golan ..
The ghostly guttersnipe Guterres was elected by pure ‘Rein’ manipulation, as controlled puppet Guardian of Zionist interests : when everybody knew that Irina Bokova was unequivocally the best person for the Job. Bokova having successfully made the ‘Destruction of Culture a Terrorist ACT’ , whilst simultaneously reducing Costs & managing to save money @UNESCO , was undermined by even her own national PM Boyko Borisov and his incompetent & dangerous ‘b**ch’ Kristalina Georgieva of the WBO now, who at the very last moment very cheekily candidated herself as opposition to Bokova, to undermine the proven track record of Irina Bokova (who is likely not a Zionist) , because ‘STALINKA’ (as her father called her, having named her after Stalin & born just down the road from me in Lubyimec), is a prostitute of all principle and any Law, in any sense, therefore she is acceptable to the misogynist men that rule her, in the Zionist controlled Western World of Banking in Harmony with the Vatican Bank, (whose chief Treasurer is Cardinal Sinner George d’Pedophile Pell, on trial in Australia, now ! ).
MEN !!?? or sick boys , better said, control the U.N.
Mastered by Zionists !
End Of >>
Rant !
(my horse calling, must go now ..)
P.s. been ranting for too many years (in the Guardian , Indy & FT ) about the Murderous Murdoch & Co. on the Golan Heights of human avarice & immoral behaviour , and Murdoch should be locked up for life either in the UK or Austfailure for he is worse than Hitler & Goebbels combined and it is an international scandal that he gets away with it ..
Not a rant.
Just reality.
The UN made Israel. The UN should occupy it and take it under administration.
Problem is Israel has taken over the UN.
You nailed it and the key operative M.O. tragically is ‘The Destruction of Culture as Terrorist ACT’ @UNESCO being totally overlooked & crowned by irony with Israel winning >> E u r o v i s i o n .. :(!@£$%^&*)
The Zionist totally control Western polities. By way of those stooges, they control the UN, all through straight money power and the Holocaust Industry, as exposed by Norman Finkelstein. It cannot last and will cause Israel’s self-destruction, but hate-crazed psychopaths like Bibi just do not care, or know how to restrain themselves. When your group self-delusion tells you that you are ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, as Begin put it, over-reach is inevitable.
Human Near Term Extinction caused by ecological collapse is already near certain, so these ‘billions’ in oil, gas and dollars will never be wrested from the Earth. Any that are will simply hasten the Day of Doom, but the religious fundies are actually look forward to the End Times, so they, at least, will be pleased.
It’s quite simple, really:
It worked with Trump because education in the US is substandard and most people don’t even know where Iran is.
It did not work with Europe, because too many people DO know where Iran is, and it’s not so far from home…
It’s kind of you to say this, Ward. But in reality, Europeans are just as clueless about geography, when the question isn’t about their own country and those which it adjoins. As part of a marketing questionnaire connected with tourism, I was once involved in compiling the results of an opinion poll asking Brits (in the allegedly wealthy and educated London suburb of Richmond) where Latvia is. We polled 50 people in a pedestrianised shopping centre on a Sunday morning. Participants were shown an outline map of Europe (extending as far as the Urals Mts of Russia, the official easternmost frontier of the continent). Only the outlines of the countries were marked, with no country names or city names marked. To help the participants, we did leave the names of major bodies of ocean – the Atlantic, the Baltic and so on, in place. To help them pick, FIVE countries were marked in red, and respondents were told that one of those five countries was, indeed, Latvia.
60% of respondents believed that Serbia was Latvia.
22% of respondents correctly identified Latvia.
8% of respondents believed Norway was Latvia
3% of respondents believed that Cyprus was Latvia.
0% of respondents believed that Eire was Latvia.
[The remaining respondents either refused to answer, or said they couldn’t answer]
@ReinerTorheit. I think 20% is a good score, for the percentage of people being able to pick out Latvia on a map of unnamed countries. Geography is my weakest point, so I knew Latvia & Lithuania were in NE Europe, but mentally put them somewhere near Norway! I hadn’t realized they (and Poland and Ukraine) were so far South. Enjoy your hot summers.
Perhaps, although it was a choice of five possible countries. Do you really believe Latvia is ‘so far south’? 😉
@Reiner. Since you have been kind enough to ask: Yes, I really believed Latvia was more up North.
So I gave myself a geography lesson. From a map of EurAsia, I wrote down my List of Latitudes of Cities for Dummies.
Northernmost: Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, St.Petersburgh.
South of North: Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Riga, Vilnius, Pinsk, Moscow.
Central: London, Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw, Astona, Irkutsk.
South of Central: Barcelona, Rome, Istanbul, Beijing, Vladivostok.
South: Damascus, Baghdad, Teheran, Kabul, Tokyo.
I’ll stop there because that Lowest Latitude is the only one without a Russian city!
As the Calif (and his successor Napoleon) said while being led away in chains, “If I’d known how big Russia was, I would not have started that war”.
Of course, today’s Global AZC think they are even bigger — hence the war against Syria by Rothschild, Cheney, Murdoch&Co may turn into a war against Russia. There are men on this planet who hope to succeed where Napoleon and Hitler failed. Men who think they are Above the Law.
But the big question is: You know where Palestine is, between Egypt and Syria. Now where is “israel”? And the answer is that “is” isn’t: it isn’t real. Those gas fields are off the coast of Palestine. The Syrian Highlands are in Syria.
‘Geography’ in the English education system has long ceased to involve anything as tedious as being able to find anything on a map. Instead, it’s become a vehicle for proselytising certain aspects of the elite’s agenda (much like most other academic disciplines, in fact).
In the age of GPS and Google Maps, do people bother looking at real maps anymore?
🙂
Cartography is the colonialist’s final booty – the right to write names of your own choice over other people’s land. Thus how Mt Denali, the highest point in N America, was renamed ‘Mt McKinley’ in honour of an American president who never set foot in Alaska whatsoever.
Before which some Siberian Merchants sold Alaska to the USA for $7.2 million , operating under the auspices of the Tsarist family, as Transnational Corporation – the “Russian-American Company”
http://www.pravdareport.com/history/04-04-2007/89041-alaska-0/
More Monarchistic mad machinations, dealings & ‘infighting’: so Mt. Denali was “Sold” during the Crimean War, (Britain’s Monarchy charging with Light Brigades, as usual, into the valley of death) , & all coz’ Ms. Palin’s ancestors became too distracting & distant for the Cossacks in S.W. Russia .. ! ?
Just a theory ..
Yes, Ms Palin famously claimed to have seen mainland Russia from Alaska :-))
You can see mainland Russia from Alaska. Ignorance of geography is no excuse. What’s funny is that the famous claim was that she could see Russia from her house. But she never said that: that comedian who looks just like Palin said it as a joke.
Sure you can. I’ve been there. Have you? And what did you see?
I’ve been to places where I couldn’t see the ground, but I haven’t been to the Bering Strait. Why do you ask?
Because you were asking if Russia could, or couldn’t be seen from Alaska. The myth that it can be seen, is based on the idea that Great Diomede Island (Rus) can be seen from Little Diomede Island (US). Twits like Palin trade on this kind of stuff.
I’m not asking.
You can see mainland Russia from Alaska.
All you need is good eyesight and a clear day.
Look at a map of the strait: it’s about 80 km across.
We can easily see that far.
See the mountains just behind the Alaska shore?
From there you can see Russia. It’s obvious.
I’ve seen the Atlas Mountains in Morocco from Sierra Nevada in Spain, more than 100 km away.
Your claim about Palin is wrong too:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-i-can-see-russia-from-my-house/
And Sagamartha/ Quomolongma becomes Mt. ‘Everest’?
Those primitive locals who live by Victoria Falls were unable to come up with a name for the falls until de White Man tol’ dem.
Oddly enough all the local names meant, more or less, ‘The smoke that thunders’, much more lyrical than Whitey’s obsequious effort. Some clever person thought of it, at some time, and no-one could improve on it.
Although the idea of Victoria falling is not entirely without merit 🙂
Gurgle Maps still shows Crimea as a part of Ukraine. Which it never was.
No worries, coz’ Google is not a Legitimate Search Engine Operator (SEO) under E.U. Law since 2016.
Fact 😉
The Europeans will cave, once the Zionists turn the screws.
Reblogged this on circusbuoy and commented:
greater Israel the long game
Israel is stealing land and valuable natural resources from Syria and occupied Palestinian Territories on a daily basis in breach of International Law as they did in formally occupied Egypt [oil in the Sinai] and as they intend doing in the Lebanese and Gaza gas fields. This is theft pure and simple and a rejection of the rules of International law, notably the occupier is not allowed to exploit occupied territory for the benefit of the home territory of course an occupation is only supposed to be temporary not over 50 years. Of course when International rules are not observed by Israel, to the detriment of its neighbours, then conflict is the inevitable result. At the moment Israels policy of might is right, backed by the US, allow Israel to flout the rules, unfortunately for Israel the balance of power is shifting in favour of the ‘arc of resistance’ Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon backed by Russia and unless Israel gives the stolen land and resources back, it will be taken back by force.
I would really like to believe you are correct .The only big question in the game plan is ,if Russia is going to stand behind their allies .The Russian backing will determine whether we will have turmoil in the Levant and the middle East or if the players will end up going for peace instead of death and destruction.
President Putin has claimed that the Israelis are Russia’s allies , if he really believes that , the Palestinian land and the Levant are doomed to the latter of the end game.
We will have to wait and see what happens and so far I have put my faith in the Russian Federation.
The Israeli regime and Zionist Right EXPLICITLY reject ‘International Law’ as not applying to them. The Yesha Council of Rabbis and Torah Sages, a highly influential Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox group closely allied to the settler Judaic Taliban, declared in 2006 that killing civilians is not just permissible under their view of Judaic Law, but is, in fact, a ‘mitzvah’ or good deed. International Humanitarian Law to the contrary was explicitly derided as ‘Christian morality’.
Such declarations are common in Israel, and fiercely debated, but the goyim must NOT comment, because that would be ‘antisemitic’. Such doctrines also allow the punishment of an entire city (eg Gaza) for the crimes of a few, directly contradicting International Law against collective punishment, and permit the killing of children, even babies, if it can be said that they would grow up to ‘oppose the Jews’.
While there is much opposition to these dogmata among Israelis, not all cosmetic, these religious injunctions plainly help drive Israeli regime intransigence, aggression and oppression, and the daily regime of humiliation, murder, torture, house destruction, vilification etc, and the regular massacres of Gazans and West Bank Palestinians that the Palestinians are forced to endure, and will endure forever until Zionist control of Western regimes is somehow ended.
So much hatred here directrd at me here, the Zionist. My Golan sits overlooking our national reservoir, the Sea of Galilee. As a result grass-roots Israelis oppose oil exploration in the Golan- it risks our water resource as the oil is only accessible via fracking. I’ve done primary research on the subject. It’ll come down to committee chairs on a regional level and who gets to them first. In fact I’m surprised not a single one of you haters, not to speak of the author, mentioned the huge oil finds in Israel within the green line. So much for your Zionist-oil connection. Carry on the hatefest.
Calling out arrant criminals isn’t hatefest, it’s truth- and justice-serving. We can leave the hating to the idiot anti-semite knuckle-draggers. The zionist project in Palestine is a monstrous crime against humanity; and it WILL “disappear from the page of history”, like the other racist apartheid abomination before it. As the US empire goes down, so will the zioentity-in-Palestine – the ziP, also known as ‘Israel’ – which depends on US support critically for its – temporary – survival. Jewish people living in the Levant are going to have to come to terms with living in a multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic Greater Palestine state, just as their northern neighbours Lebanon and Syria manage to do. Either that, or migrate back to Russia and Brooklyn again.
And the end of the other apartheid in South Africa did the South African ‘Whites’ no great harm. Of course, many of the Jews left, to Israel or Diaspora communities, but Israelis who don’t fancy living in a unitary, non ‘Jews only’ Palestine in future, can readily leave for Crown Heights, Golders Green or anywhere that suits their fancy. A Jews only Israeli Herrenvolk state will not endure. It’s just a matter of time, and how much destruction accompanies its end.
Mouths dropping widely 🙂 Nice try Zion 😉
An environmentally friendly Zionist , with Pigs flying freely over the sea of >> Jesus yer’ stretching it a bit with that cracking fracking line on divisions of thought & distractions strategy , round here .. pal 🙂
They’ll crucify you after some waterboarding, just tendering .. 🙂
I’m not a hater. I’m angry. Not the same.
May I feed back what you just said? ‘Grass roots’ Israelis oppose fracking. I’ll leave aside your neglecting to cite your ‘primary research’ findings, far less set out your research methods. But if you’re right, these grass roots Israelis are fuming about water purity. Well that I can understand, who wouldn’t be? But did your ‘primary research’ ask what said grass roots Israelis think of the morality of plundering the resources of another, far poorer country, on the basis of an unlawful occupation?
Zionist-oil connection? Don’t follow you pal. One, I explicitly don’t reduce Syria’s ordeal to oil. Two, the prime villain as I see it is Big Money or, to put it a tad more scientifically, the logic of capital in the age of imperialism. Oddly enough I was taken to task yesterday by someone demanding to know why I hadn’t included Jacob Rothschild’s name: also on the Genie Board. Her implicit dig was that I must be a defender of Zionism, else I’d have put JR up there with Murdoch, Summers, Cheney and Woolsey. Happy to oblige, I added his name to the list on the version on my site. Maybe the addition will deflect some of her wrath – the fact it was an afterthought, rather than core driver of my piece, some of yours.
That’s the trouble with us liberals – trying to please everyone.
Zionism is the equivalent for the Jews of Nazism for the Germans. A racist, ultra-nationalist, xenophobic doctrine driven by hatred of the other, the goy untermenschen, and the Palestinians in particular. Zionism ALWAYS envisaged the extermination or expulsion of the ‘two-legged animals’ who actually lived and had lived in the region for tens of millennia. In that it is just another European settler racism, exactly like its lost love, Afrikaaner South Africa. That it is built on Judaic religious mythology only makes it more unhinged.
“Zion” spews so much hatred.
The Syrian Highlands belong to Syria. Their theft by “israel” is illegal.
The Sea of Galilee is Palestine’s natural reservoir. Its theft by “israel” is illegal.
Any oil found in or near Occupied Palestine belongs to Palestine. Its theft by “israel” is illegal.
Oh no, we don’t hate Jerusalem/ al Quds/ Zion. We just wish “israel” would stop stealing everybody’s stuff, stop occupying stolen Palestine, stop injuring animals, stop shooting unarmed protesters, stop threatening to nuke …, The list is very long.
What you kikes don’t seem able to grasp is that when you DO bad things, people SAY bad things about you.
Like when the kike kiddie killers gun down thousands of unarmed demonstrators in a kike hatefest that would make Sharpeville look like a picnic, like they did yesterday.
Like when Palestinians are kicked out of their homes they have occupied and the land they have farmed for generations to make way for rabid Zionist settler fanatics from Brooklyn.
Or when settler thugs kidnap a young child and burn him to death and brag about it afterwards, naturally with no consequences for themselves.
Like when the genocidal terrorist Kikenreich drops 20,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, a greater explosive yield than Hiroshima, with rabid kikes sitting in deckchairs having barbecues and picnics to watch all the fun. Say what you like about the Nazis, but when they were gassing Jews, at least they were a little circumspect about it. They didn’t bring in local families with their picnics to watch all the fun.
Or when a vile bitch of a government minister, Shaked, calls for all Palestinian mothers to be exterminated in concentration camps so that no Palestinian children can be born. Or when two rabbis publish The King’s Torah, calling for the murder of all Palestinian children. Or when a national newspaper, the Times Of Israel, quite openly advocates genocide and calls for the extermination of the Palestinian people at concentration camps in the desert.
But don’t worry. The Orange Baboon in the White House and all the 30 shekel goy whores in Congress will jump up and down like trained seals and give Nitwit Yahoo thirty standing ovations whenever he so much as breaks wind.
Don’t EVER use the word “kikes” on this website again.
Your use of a nasty racist expletive to describe Jews isn’t intended to condemn everyone else posting here through guilt by association, is it? I’ve often seen hasbara trolls using that tactic.
Back in the early sixties there were many who explained the US involvement in Vietnam by arguing that there were immense oil reserves off the coast of Vietnam and that the US was determined to ensure that those reserves were exploited to benefit American capitalists.
They were wrong. The US was simply acting as empires do, making a demonstration of its power, militarily, economically and ideologically while attempting to weaken its rivals, the Soviet Union and China.
I don’t think that the oil reserves in the Golan are unimportant, any more than I thought that Dick Cheney was not conscious that Iraq was rich in oil, but, just as the attack on Iraq had little to do with picking up concessions for Exxon or BP, Israel’s ambitions in the Golan are unrelated to its oil potential. Israel wants to rule the entire region and the Golan is a strategic asset, crucial in its view, to dominating Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and beyond.
There is nothing new about Israel, even its zionism is merely an east european copy of the ideological apologias that lay behind Massachusetts or Ulster. A Hebrew variant on the Drang nach Osten. It is an imperial colony, De Gaulle compared Israelis to the colons in Algeria and predicted their imminent disappearance. It is based solely on the use of force, derived from its Anglo American sponsors who act as guarantors. Without the guarantee of the Empire, Israel has nothing but the nuclear arsenal which in a lapse of judgement that historians, if there are any, will marvel at, was placed in its hands by corrupt western governments.
Far more dangerous than North Korea’s nuclear weapons, a hundred times more real than Iran’s nuclear programme, and much more enduring than the guarantees it has from Europe and America, that arsenal is what will postpone the inevitable agreement between settlers and natives in Palestine until even more blood is shed, even more Palestinian kids are crippled by snipers and more reporters and protesters killed to satisfy the blood lust of an electorate not unlike the plebeians in Rome who cheered in the cheap seats of the Colosseum.
As to the oil, as Cheney said, it is fungible.
Respectfully Bevin, everything Bibi does is resource based. For instance, his dealing with Cyprus and Greece for the East Med natgas pipeline to exploit the Leviathan and Aphrodite gas fields. And if it is not resource acquisition based: it is influenced by the strategic denial of resources in his strategy to be the regional hegemon. Thus, the Gaza Marine fields are relatively insignificant compared to the Leviathan, Tamar and Dalit fields: but he sure as hell is not going to let the Palestinians benefit from their own gas. So he shoots the fishermen and steals the gas. Plus, Gaza Marine provides a useful stopgap until the Leviathan comes fully online. Likewise, the Lebanon/Israel gas conflict is about prevention as much as acquisition of the resource. I’m pretty sure, though it is not often spoken of, that FUKUSA and Isreali concerns (Nobel energy, BP, Total, etc) were eyeing Syrian gas concessions in the Levantine Basin, without much thought of sharing them with the Syrians. The entry of Gazprom into this speculation changes that equation.
If it is not about the oil in the Golan, it will be about the clear gold in a desert region – water. Israel has severe and chronic hydrological shortcomings: in fact, there could be no more Israel due to water – not oil or gas. The aquifers in Gaza and the West Bank are collapsing; Israel is seized by a four year drought; and they are already operating at 95% of their maximum water extraction capacity. To cede the headwaters of the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River; which produces a third of Israels fresh water would be suicide for a megalomaniac like Bibi. Working at full capacity, Israel’s water supply could quickly be held to ransom.
https://www.merip.org/mer/mer116/water-israels-occupation-strategy
And if it is about the oil, and there is not that much of it or it is of poor quality (Likely): then Bibi is still not going to let the Syrians exploit there own oil without him. This will go for any subsequent Israeli leader. Syrian oil is neither great in quantity or quality, but the oil and gas fields are still being occupied – to prevent Syria funding its own reconstruction. Another reason for Iraq, and Syria, the victors corporate carve up. Russia’s intervention has complicated that scenario too. Russia, Turkey, and Iran (with Chinese capital input) are Syria’s preferred rebuilding partners.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-preps-for-syrian-war-with-golans-oil-and-water-in-its-sights/237566/
And finally, there is the price of oil. All this talk of war with Iran has pushed the price of Brent futures up to $77 per barrel, with hype of $100. This helps all oil producers, including Russia. No suggestion of collusion – just that it is part of the equation. So resources play an integral part of MENA regional politics. Wasn’t that why the Israeli state was created? To ensure regional instability?
The water issue is also why Israel has long had its sights on southern Lebanon, in particular the Bekaa valley and the Litani River.
Also pursuing an immigration policy to bring all Jewish people to Israel and allowing new settlers to pursue a lavish Western lifestyle with swimming pools – while denying water to Palestinians – among other things, indicates a deliberate misuse of water.
Bang on , Big B 😉
Big B, you talk about the gas fields off the coast of Occupied Palestine as if they belong to the occupier. Theft of the gas by “israel” is illegal.
I said it was an issue of “strategic denial” – i.e. depriving the Palestinians of their own gas. How does that imply or confer ownership on Israel? And I said Bibi “shoots the fishermen and steals the gas”. That’s pretty clear, is it not?
I fear Israel’s interest in the Middle East is more closely connected to oil than you imagine.
Despite global warming, oil is still power, and this is a power game, with lots of innocent deaths to prove it.
The oil is not fungible, it is fudgeable, and Cheney knew all about fudging.
This from the company profile- The company also holds an 86.1% interest in the southern portion of the Golan Heights in Northern Israel.
Surreal does not come close to describing the actions of these villains .
Of course you can make it up, it is the end game of fanatical capitalism: killing for riches; everything we do is justifiable, anything the competition does is criminal.
Indeed, and a certain killer-ape triad has been hell-bent on pushing this theory to the Max. How the genocide in Yemen & Eastern Ukraine is enriching anyone is anybodys guess, though.
@Eddie. Yemen was explained years ago by Pepe Escobar: domination of a “choke point” — maritime strait for oil and gas transport. Ukraine was a direct military thrust by NATZO at Russia’s naval base in Crimea — brilliantly foiled by the Russians, who have been living in Crimea for 200 years, ever since Catherine the Great took it from the Tatars.
Yemen is the opposite side of the Bab al-Mandeb straits from Djibouti (where China has its first overseas base) …which is a node on the BRI maritime Silk route.
That’s not the end point of capitalism-killing for riches is the very definition of capitalism, and always has been.
Yes….all about oil and the wealth it can give select few. I recall seeing an article about 2 years back explaining the small New Jersey ( US ) energy company that did the surveys for oil. it also mentioned WHO was on their board of directors…. plain as day you cold see who the big players were and how it all fit together. greed is endemic in the West, and no amount of deaths and destruction necessary to obtain it matters.