By Stuart Littlewood – London
Martin van Creveld, a former professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a world-leading writer on military matters, has made many enemies with his seemingly outrageous views.
But actually he does a great service by sharing his thoughts about what ‘mad dog’ Israeli might do next.
In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier (the Dutch weekly) Van Creveld said: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."
Van Creveld talked about ‘collective deportation’ as Israel’s only meaningful plan for the Palestinian people. “The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this [the Israeli government] are waiting only for the right man and the right time… "
As to whether Israel would care much about being branded a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Van Creveld quoted a remark by former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Lebanon, and now Gaza…Israel’s ‘mad dog’ credentials are beyond dispute. And the West is leaning over backwards not to be bothersome.
So has the right time arrived? Could the man they are waiting for be the snarling rottweiler Netanyahu, who seems to be in with a good chance at the Israeli elections?
He’s a ‘war on terror’ enthusiast and therefore very appealing to the Israeli electorate. It was he who, in 2001, said: "There is an empire of terror. There are chiefdoms. Arafat has his own chiefdoms. Bin Laden has his own chiefdom. The Hezbollah in Lebanon have their chiefdom. There is Hamas and Islamic Jihad working under Arafat’s chiefdom. And they enjoy the support and sponsorship in close cooperation with such sovereign states as Iraq and Iran, havens in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern regimes. They work together, both in material support and of course political support…
“They are after our civilization. We must summon the forces of civilization and the force and the power to act against them now, when we have the power and when we still have the time to do so.”
These militant Islamics, he said, don’t hate America because of Israel. “It’s the other way around. They hate Israel because of America. They see us… as an outpost of common values, our common values of freedom. They hate that freedom. They hate our way of life. They hate our respect for individual rights, our ideas of free choice, our free society, our free press… It’s that flame of liberty that these people want to extinguish. But it is the United States holding that torch with its allies who can wipe out these terrorists. And we must do nothing short of it. We must wipe them out or they will wipe us out.”
Come again? Islamists hate Israel’s respect for individual rights?
In the meantime the US and Britain have been very obliging in the vast amounts of money, effort and lives they have expended in Iraq and Afghanistan for Israel’s benefit.
Later, in 2006, Netanyahu was cooking up the case for war against Iran, saying: "It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs."
Of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he urged: "Stop him… He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."
Speaking on Israeli Army Radio, Netanyahu claimed that Israel would be Iran’s first target for destruction but, to make sure Israel’s supporters remained in a cosy, warm embrace and firmly on-side, insisted that Iran’s arsenal would also be directed against the US and Europe.
When asked if President Bush could afford another military adventure after Iraq, Netanyahu said acting on the Iranian threat would not be adventurous but necessary.
Netanyahu was groomed and financed from an early age by the sinister and influential CFR – America’s Council on Foreign Affairs – and has links to George Schultz and warmongering neo-cons like Perle and Feith.
Van Creveld’s specialism is the future of war and he’s well placed for a shrewd appreciation of where Israel’s warpath is leading. Every stooge and Zionist plant in the White House, Congress and Senate, and in Number 10, the Foreign Office, Westminster, and the front and back benches of the Labour and Conservative Parties should take note.
After Gaza did they reprimanded the delinquent cur and banished it to its kennel? No. They still pat and stroke and feed the rabid beast.
– Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
