(Annual) Post on Why do I think about the situation in the Middle East the Way I do

Hello everybody!

Every time we start discussing ‘Middle East’, and ‘Israel’ in particular, there are ‘readers’ reactions’ to my analysis and commentary in style of (essentially), ‘you’re going to ruin your reputation by your approach to this topic’.

Another ‘version’ of this kind of ‘critique’ I get to hear very often is (essentially),  ‘You (meaning me) are excellent in studying and analysing any other war, but you can’t analyse the Arab-Israeli conflict’. Or, ‘you’re credible when it comes to Ukraine, but you’re not when it comes to Israel’.

How interesting, isn’t it?

Well, at least meanwhile there were also multiple requests for something like a ‘reading list’. Thus, here it is (again): kind of ‘on annual basis’ (because I’ve posted a similar list almost exactly a year ago), my list of recommended reading about the Arab-Israeli Conflict’ (where I think that, actually: ‘Zionist vs everybody else’ would be a better description, simply because Israel is not even distantly something like ‘representative of all the Jews’, and neither all the Jews, nor all the Israelis are fascistoid religious fanatics, as should be obvious at least from reading books like Miko Peled’s The General’s Son).

Certainly enough, there are thousands of books about this conflict. At least I could list about a thousand I have in my private library (and yes, have read them all). But, there’s no space for this, nor would such a hefty list really help anybody. Thus, here something like a ‘short-cut to reading about the Arab-Israeli Conflict’: a list of books best-substantiated with evidence in form of official documentation.

For beginners into this topic, recommended read is Arabs and Israel for Beginners. I think that tinny little, 30-years-old book is doing its job so well – it’s bringing to the point so much research by so many others – that, except for authors listed below, anybody who hasn’t read it has little to comment about this conflict.

For those with serious, in-depth interest into this topic (that is: more than you might need for the usual single-line ‘discussion’ in the social media): sorry, you’ll have to read a lot, lot more. And that ‘just for the start’.

Good beginning (even if really a ‘though, dry’ read), are Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of Jewish People and The Invention of the Land of Israel. That way you’re going to find out who and how developed the idea of the ‘Jewish People’ and ‘their need for an own country’. Or: why is the story of Israel as we know it since 1948, and the mass of the ‘argumentation pro’, actually a pile of lies and unsubstantiated mythology.

Having taught yourself about the birth of the idea for Israel, you need something to understand the situation in the Middle East at the time the area was invaded by Western powers (during the First World War) and the process of creating Israel began: something that’s going to tell you the story of into what surroundings have the British and Zionists decided to insert that Erez Israel, plus create such artificial states like ‘Lebanon’,  ‘Transjordan/Jordan’, ‘Syria’, ‘Iraq’ and few others. Also why the ‘history’ of each of these ‘nations’ as we know it is full of Western-made fabrications, and, consequently, why de-facto all of them can only be described as ‘failed states’. That’s so because, just for example, Palestine was no ‘land without people for people without land’, as lied by Theodor Herzl when he was inventing Zionism, but a densely populated and heavily cultivated area, and a part of the thriving Ottoman Province of Syria. And the Ottoman Empire was no ‘Sick man on Bosphorus’, as claimed by the British and French propaganda (at the time and ever since): as much as it’s unpopular to say so (at least in ‘the West’), as much as it’s ‘hard to believe’ (especially in the light of what Erdogan did with Turkey over the last decade), and at least in final decades of its existence, the Ottoman Empire was a rapidly developing constitutional monarchy with free elections and self-governance, run by a cosmopolitan meritocracy. Unsurprisingly, during the First World War, it didn’t ‘just fall apart’, as usually explained, but was fighting with all its forces, and quite successfully at that (ask the British, Indians and ANZACS about places named ‘al-Qut’ and ‘Galipoli’), and its Army was anything else but ‘commanded by Turkish officers only’: it was a mirror of its multi-cultural population. To understand this, and all the ‘how comes’, you need Michael Provence’s The last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

After realising Palestine is densely populated, Herzl entered correspondence with Yusuf Diya-Uddin al-Khalidi, Mayor of Jerusalem, and member of the Ottoman Parliament, trying to convince him that the local population would do great if selling their land and homes to the Zionists.

Khalidi answered in French (like any Ottoman technocrat of the late 19th Century, he was highly-educated and fluent in multiple languages), explaining Herzl, essentially, that his ideas are insane and certain to lead to a major conflict.

Alas, the British and the French ‘knew better’ (and, of course: still know better). Therefore, and together with Russia, they’ve decided to destroy the Ottoman Empire and then distribute its territory between themselves and their local allies (foremost Greece, Italy, and Armenia). Moreover, the British and the French promptly destroyed the self-governance of the locals, and imposed a military occupation regime. Then they began carving out multiple artificial states. For example, the French created ‘Lebanon’ as their principal foothold in the Middle East and dominated by the local Christians, and – against better advice of the same local Christians – made it too big (thus instantly converting the local Christians into a minority of its population) through including territories predominantly populated by the Arabs (Sunnis and Shi’a, where at the time, and until at least 1982, though more like 2003, nobody in the West even knew, nor cared to know, that there are multiple sects in Islam).

For that part of the story, you need James Barr’s A Line in the Sand.

By that point in time, you’re going to find out that in 1919, US President Woodrow Willson sent the King-Crane Commission to the Middle East. It’s task was to go and ask the locals (regardless what ethnic or religious group) what kind of governance they prefer and in what kind of a state they want to live. The French didn’t let them into Lebanon, and the British didn’t let them into ‘Iraq’, but, and just for example: the population of ‘Syria’ (including ‘Palestine’) was clearly pro self-governance in an Arab state (some 4% said they’re pro a Jewish state).

Moreover, you’re going to find out that both the British occupation of the area, and – but especially – the French occupation of ‘Lebanon’ and ‘Syria’, encountered bitter resistance. You’re also going to find out that the mythology spread in movies like ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is PRBS. Actually, Arab officers of the Ottoman Army in Syria did something similar like Atatürk did in Anatolia: they didn’t disband their units but established the Arab Kingdom of Syria. This was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament, claiming control over all the areas from Aleppo and Dayr az-Zawr in the north (Turkey was not yet declared as such) to Aqaba in the south (including Jerusalem in between). If anybody has doubts about its seriousness: let me add that it welcomed Zionist settlement, even entered a contract with them - on condition this didn’t violate the rights of the native population.

Alas, the Arab nationalists in Damascus then did a mistake: they’ve appointed Faysal as a king (yes, the one Faysal from ‘Lawrence of Arabia’). Contrary to them, who were highly educated, though soldiers, and strictly opposing the British and French rule – the guy was a weakling ‘properly modelled’ by the British ever since 1916. So, when the French invaded the Arab Kingdom of Syria, in 1920, he promptly gave up, disbanded the army and fled, leaving his Minister of Defence to resist with what was left of that army. This was defeated, and the French then marched on Damascus (so their commander was able to walk to Salahuddin’s Tomb and cheer a ‘revenge’ for the loss of the area during the Crusades…)

Then, another of sons of the Sharif of Mecca, mobilised an army and marched northwards, on Damascus with intention of liberating it from the French. Alas, the British stopped him in the Aman area and crowned him the ‘King of Transjordan’…

BTW, around the same time, the uprising in Mesopotamia (‘Iraq’) was reaching such proportions that London was seriously considering a withdrawal. After even the invention of ‘air policing’ failed (see: intentional and barbaric bombardment of civilians from the air), that ‘crisis’ was ‘solved’ by one Winston Churchill - through bringing another of Sharif’s sons to act as a king and control the minority rule of the Suni over predominantly Shi’a population…plus Kurds..

Simply brilliant…

And then, in 1925, an even bigger uprising erupted in Syria: the French solved the solution through deploying troops from what is nowadays Algeria and Morocco, tanks and artillery to exterminate whoever opposed them – including 40,000 Damascene (Muslims, Christians, Jews alike), massacred when the French artillery ‘simply’ shelled the city the way nowadays the Russians are shelling places like Baikhmut or Pokrovsk. That’s where you might want to read Michael Provence’s The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism.

BTW, through all of this time, the resistance to the Western military occupation in the Middle East and creations of multiple artificial countries was not only armed. As of 1918, there were over 200 local daily newspapers in Syria (including Palestine and Lebanon) alone: together with the mass of the local ‘inteligentsiya’, nearly all were all in the protest. Similarly, the newly-created League of Nations was receiving dozens of thousands of petitions from the locals. Petitions were one of means of self-governance in the Ottoman Empire. And, the Sultan in Istanbul (or his officials) were taking these damn serious. If you were a corrupt governor or any other kind of official in the Ottoman Empire, and your population began complaining to the Sultan, you were extremely likely to end a head shorter. The British and French couldn’t care less, of course: they did their best to make all the petitions in question disappear… together with thousands of Arab nationalists: these were not only ‘detained’, but regularly ‘disappeared’, if not summarily executed..

Finally, a ’dot on I’ was delivered by nobody less than Atatürk, when, in 1923-24, he convinced his government to abolish the Caliphate (since the 16^th Century, the Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph and therefore the religious leader of all the Suni Muslims), thus leaving the Suni Islam leaderless.

From that point onward, any ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’ could declare himself a Caliph… (hint, hint…)

Now, of course, you might say I’m going off topic. Because all you’re interested about is ‘Israel’…

OK, then lets shorten the story and continue with Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951.

If you think that’s ‘not balanced enough’, fine: get yourself Benny Morris 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.

….an excerpt from Morris’ book…

But, if you do follow that advice, then you need Stephen Green’s Taking Sides: America’s secret Relations with a Militant Israel, too. Otherwise you’re going to blunder around and not understand the story of Zionists dragging the USA into supporting them, even fighting wars for them – which is exactly what the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the US Armed Forces (something like ‘GenStab, US style’) were seriously warning about already as of March 1948 (i.e. before ‘Israel’ was officially declared).

BTW, from Sand, Pappe and Morris, you’re also going to learn that the Zionists didn’t ‘buy all of Palestine from the Ottomans’, as widely babbled around in ‘the West’. As of 1947, they owned mere 7% of the territory (to illustrate this, we’ve drawn a very detailed map based on contemporary documentation, for the book here). The majority of the rest was owned by land-owners living in the economic centre of the entire area: in Damascus – although the British and the French meanwhile did their best to separate Damascus (i.e. ‘Syria’) from ‘Palestine’, from its natural harbour (i.e. ‘Beirut/Lebanon’), and from other vital points of commercial contact (i.e. ‘Baghdad/Iraq’)….

Anyway… the same year, 1947, the UN – primarily all the possible Western powers disgusted over the Holocaust (even more so because a few of them felt guilty over fiercely opposing Jewish emigration from Germany and Austria in the 1930s) – assigned 51% of the territory to Zionists (in turn creating the mythology about ‘Israel is a country for survivors of the Holocaust’, and thus ‘the Happy End to Holocaust’).

However, the Zionists, exactly as predicted by the JCS, wanted not only all of Palestine, but most of neighbouring countries/territories too: southern Lebanon, large part of Syria, most (if not all) of Transjordan, and the Sinai of Egypt (plus quite some of territory west of the Suez canal). Indeed, they were after little else but their economic- and military hegemony over all of the Middle East (which, again, is what you can read in Green’s ‘Taking Sides’, tidily supported by US military documentation).

When you then read Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War, you’re going to find out that during the 1950s, the GenStab of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) converted this idea into an obsession with ‘defensible borders’, and systematically equipped and drilled the IDF for fighting a war in which it would secure these. And that they were more than happy to grab the opportunity (including staging a de-facto coup d’état against the ‘democratically elected’ Israeli government), and realise ‘most’ (not all) such dreams and plans during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Ah yes, and: if you want to come to explain me about the ‘horrors’ of ‘all’ the Jews ethnically cleansed from different Arab countries since the early 1950s, I would recommend you finding yourself the Jews in question (BTW, the mass of them didn’t move to Israel, but to the USA), and talking with them. So you can find out it was foremost the Mossad who was terrorising them into leaving their homeland: when they came to Israel, the country, the language and the culture were all completely foreign to them, and the (quote from David Ben-Gurion) ‘cultivated, European Jews’ nicely settled them (another quote from David Ben-Gurion) - ‘those less-worthy Jews from the Middle East’ - along the borders and taught them that they have to prove themselves, by being more extremist Zionists than the original Zionists, to earn themselves the right to stay….

And then… long story short: what the Israelis then did with all the territories they have occupied, and the people they have found there, was to impose a similar military occupation like the British and French did, 50 years before. No rights to self-governance, no democracy, no pluralism, no tolerance, but an Apartheid system with yet more mass murders and ethnic cleansing – this time through unleashing religious-extremists: ‘settlers’. And if you think it’s me who came to the idea to call it that way, or some neo-Nazis or anti-Semites: nope. It’s people like those from the Israeli human-rights-watch group B’Tselem who call it Apartheid, and its such top Jewish/Israeli journos like Ronen Bergman, who are nicely explaining the why; namely, How Extremists Took Over Israel.

What a surprise the natives are resisting, just like they’ve resisted the British and the French, 50-100 years ago, isn’t it?

And the more one terrorises them, while supporting their extremists (to disunite them) and own extremists… oh, what a surprise: this is then resulting in emergence of gangs like Hamas, Hezbollah, and similar.

No end of surprises.. really stunning…

This all is getting even more important considering what one can read – foremost – in dozens of more recent books by Israeli historians. Sure, Ze’ev Schiff & Ehud Ya’ari’s Israel’s Lebanon War is meanwhile partially obsolete, and they didn’t connect a lots of dots one is able connecting 30 years later. But, when one then adds content of dozens of books ‘listed’ above, plus those published in Israel and few other places ever since, plus hundreds of interviews with participants, then that’s resulting in books providing an ‘executive summary’ of all of this, in order to provide the backgrounds and context for such contemporary military history works like (‘for example’, and ‘between others’):

-          The June 1967 Arab-Israeli War (Vol.1)

-          Lebanese Civil War (Vol.1)

-          Lebanese Civil War (Vol.2)

-          Lebanese Civil War (Vol.3)

...and many others.

As for ‘why am I using such books to understand the backgrounds and context’?

If I, as a military historian, do not understand the (geo-strategic & socio-economic) backgrounds and context to the conflict in question, I’m unable to explain even the type, colours and markings on aircraft deployed in that war, not to talk about how and why were they deployed the way they were.

So, come on and tell me I’m ruining my reputation, that I’m biased, and an anti-Semite because I’ve learned to analyse the ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ on basis of research by best of Israeli historians and accounts of IDF veterans. But, please, do not wonder when I counter every nonsense like ‘the war began on 7 October 2023’ and ‘what happened before doesn’t matter’ with a ‘litany’, actually, demanding you to inform yourself.

Alternatively, please mind: history is the same kind of science like Mathematics. Empiric evidence is that 1+1=2. Correspondingly, when already Herzl concluded the Zionists will have to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to establish Erez Israel; when the King-Crane Commission concluded that the only way to establish a viable Jewish state would be with armed force; when the JCS concluded the same in 1948 (plus that Israel is going to gradually drag the USA into the war on its side); when Israeli historians are publishing documentation citing orders for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians out of Palestine I 1947-1949, and when Zionists are not only openly expressing their intention to ethnically cleanse all the remaining native population out of the territory, but living this every single day, and fighting an endless war for this purpose - then a negation of all of this is like if you demand me to say 1+1=17, or 31, or whatever else.

….and that because somebody (and, in the case of Zionism: that was an atheist) created a version of ‘religion’ that’s of your personal preference?

In such case, it’s not my credibility that’s questionable, but: people insisting on religiously- and racism-motivated dogmas have no credibility at all.