Jonathan Cook
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 29 August 2015 11:43 UTC
Settlements, Israel, Jeff Halper, Palestinian, weapons, Security
For 18 years Jeff Halper has been on the front lines of the Israel-Palestine
conflict, helping to rebuild Palestinian homes in the occupied territories
demolished by Israel. As he prepares to step down as head of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), he is publishing a new book on
Israel.
Halpers main conclusion is disturbing. Israel, he says, is globalising
Palestine.
The former anthropology professors wide-ranging research has forced him
into an expertise he is not entirely comfortable with: the global arms
industry.
Halper argues that Israel is cashing in both financially and
diplomatically on systems of control it has developed in the occupied
territories. It is exporting its know-how to global elites keen to protect
their privileges from both external and internal challengers.
In a world supposedly mired in an endless war on terror, we may all be
facing a future as Palestinians.
Halpers book, entitled War Against the People, due out next month, suggests
that Israel provides a unique window on some of the most important recent
developments in what he terms "securocratic warfare".
The books central thesis emerged as he tried to understand why tiny Israel
hits way beyond its weight economically, politically and militarily. How
does Israel have so much clout not only in the US and Europe but, more
surprisingly in countries as diverse as India, Brazil and China?
None of the usual explanations Holocaust guilt, the power of lobbies, even
the growth in Christian fundamentalism seemed to provide a complete
answer.
Global pacification
Zeev Maoz, an Israeli political science professor based in California, set
Halper on a different track. He has observed that one of the Zionist
movements fundamental tenets was to tie its wagon to a hegemon, serving
it, Halper says.
The Zionists did that early on by cultivating British support in Palestine.
Once established as a state, Israel helped the French and British at Suez in
1956, and after 1967 Israel served as a US surrogate in the Middle East
during the Cold War.
Today, Israels growing influence, Halper claims, reflects its positioning
of itself at the heart of the rapidly burgeoning global pacification
industry, advising and assisting militaries, police forces and homeland
security agencies around the world.
In the post-9/11 world, Israel is security king or securityland, as a
leading Israeli analyst recently described it.
And significantly, Israel is starting to parlay this usefulness into wider
political and diplomatic support, says Halper, even as the international
community grows exasperated by nearly 50 years of occupation. Such backing,
including from much of the Arab world, often remains hidden from view.
US president Dwight Eisenhowers grim warning from the 1950s that a rampant
military-industrial complex was threatening to become the real power
behind the façade of popular democracy needs updating, says Halper.
He describes the emergence of what he calls the MISSILE complex:
full-spectrum dominance by the US and its allies through the joint activity
of the military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence and law
enforcement.
After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes, Israel
is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as a
giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics
and weaponry.
An arms superpower
As we meet at his home in West Jerusalem, Halper is keen to stress that he
is only sketching the outlines of the new US-led global pacification
industry. He has entered largely uncharted waters. Journalists, analysts and
academics have shied away from the necessary research, he claims, preferring
to keep within their narrow specialisations.
Halper is interested in big-picture analysis, joining up the dots. And
doing so has forced him to explore unfamiliar territory, reading up on key
texts in security studies, poring over the works of terrorism experts, and
meeting decorated generals.
Halper points out that Israel spends about 8 percent of its GDP a year on
the military, about twice the per capita expenditure of the United States.
Despite its size, Israel has more military aircraft than any European
country.
Israel has four of the worlds top 100 arms manufacturers, and is ranked
among the top 10 arms dealing countries, in some assessments as high as
fourth place. The Global Militarisation Index has crowned Israel the most
militarised nation on the planet every year since 2007.
In May Israel won a new accolade, becoming a cyber superpower, its
companies selling about a tenth of the worlds computer and network security
technology.
That focus on the military and weapons systems has led Israel into official
military relations with 130 countries, many of them dictatorships known for
their human rights violations. Reports suggest that Israel engages in more
dubious and secretive deals with additional regimes.
This month the United Nations disclosed that Israel was breaking a western
arms embargo on selling weapons to South Sudan, fuelling the civil war
there. Critics have suggested that Israel also has advisers and trainers
operating clandestinely in South Sudan.
End of conventional wars
But Israels real talent, says Halper, has been to exploit a new emphasis on
securocratic warfare.
Wars between states are largely a thing of the past, he observes. In the
new kind of warfare, F-35 jets and nuclear weapons are far less useful. What
is needed now are the skills Israel has developed after a century of
counter-insurgency against the Palestinians. Israel is the go-to country
when it comes to securocratic warfare.
The need for this kind of warfare was highlighted following the US attack on
Iraq in 2003, he notes. Conventional wars between states have traditionally
involved three phases: operational preparations, the actual attack, and the
outcome.
But Iraq as well as Afghanistan before it showed a fourth stage: the
need for stabilisation and peace-keeping following regime change.
The pacification industry that has boomed post-9/11, Halper notes, is
spreading back to the West. As the military takes on many of the duties of a
police force in external wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, back home the
police become ever more militarised. Police in Ferguson look
indistinguishable from their compatriots in the US army in Iraq.
What we are seeing is the rise of the human-security state endless war
on terror, the world in a permanent state of emergency. The traditional
hard walls between the police and the military, between domestic and
overseas intelligence agencies between the FBI and the CIA , if you like
crumble.
Warrior cops
For elites who see danger lurking around every corner, Israel has the
answer: what he calls the warrior cop. For decades Israel has been
operating paramilitary forces like the Border Police, as well as
intelligence services like the Shin Bet, whose area of operational
responsibility is not constrained by distinctions between Israel and the
occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel created the model long ago of the military and police working
together, and now it is well-placed to train the world, Halper concludes.
That point was underscored this week when the Israeli government announced
that a long-time army officer, Gal Hirsch, would become the head of Israels
national police force.
What is at stake? Are the US and Europe not trying to defend themselves
against real terror threats?
Halper believes it is important to examine these developments within a
larger framework: the capitalist world system.
It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global terror
threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised,
creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US
and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands.
Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital and
labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into
wastelands or slums.
The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as
great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their
desperate plight.
This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has developed
its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper.
The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states
concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare,
migration threats, and much more.
The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel.
Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a
tourist destination, not a regional hegemon.
A place at NATOs table
Israels arms industry isnt just aimed at making money. It puts Israel at
the table with NATO countries. Israel conducts military exercises with
NATO, and helps develop Watchkeeper drones for the Europeans.
It also has increasingly close ties, says Halper, with regimes that are
ostensibly its enemy, such as Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are funding ISIS
[Islamic State], so how does one explain their alliance with Israel? The
common denominator is security politics. No two countries have interests
more alike than Israel and Saudi Arabia.
When the Saudis unveiled the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Halper argues,
they offered, in return for an end to the occupation, the Arab worlds
recognition of Israel as the regional hegemon.
Is Israels usefulness paying off diplomatically?
There are indications that increasingly it is. The Economist recently noted
that India, which has long track record of supporting the Palestinians, was
among five countries abstaining at the UN Human Rights Council last month on
a resolution criticising Israel for its conduct in Gaza last summer in a
51-day attack that killed more than 500 children.
The magazine added that Israeli officials believe the international
communitys growing dependence on its arms will reduce its vulnerability
over the long term to the boycott (BDS) movement.
Halper points out that Nigeria, another country that has become reliant on
Israeli arms, recently also betrayed its traditional support for the
Palestinians.
Nigeria saved Israel and the US great embarrassment last December when it
voted in the UN Security Council against a Palestinian resolution demanding
an end to the occupation. The US had feared that it would have to cast its
veto.
Halper emphasises that the US is still the worlds largest arms dealer by
some margin. But in its scramble to fill the niches, Israel helps shine a
light on the arms industrys true purpose: not security, but pacification.
"When you call it security, you shut down the debate. Who doesnt want
security? But when you reframe it is as pacification, the real goals
become much clearer.
- See more at:
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-we-are-all
-doomed-become-palestinians-1441741137#sthash.mrJbFGEj.dpuf
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-we-are-all
-doomed-become-palestinians-1441741137
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
R E C O N C I L I A T I O N C O N F ER E N C E L I S T
since 1994 by the
Jewish Peoples Liberation Organization
End Zionism & Judaeophobia
abraham Weizfeld PhD moderator-founder SaaLaHa@xxxxxxxxxx
JPLO-OLPJ-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
political declaration JPLO ( a Bundist chapter )
http://bundist-movement.org/about-us.html
the books
Sabra and Shatila (1984) 2009
http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000255066/Sabra-and-Shatila.as
px
The End of Zionism: and the liberation of the Jewish People 1989
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them;
and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them;
but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them;
and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them: Muhammad
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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. Jonathan Cook
Saturday 29 August 2015 10:00 UTC
Last update:
Saturday 29 August 2015 11:43 UTC
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Topics:
Occupation
Tags:
Settlements, Israel, Jeff Halper, Palestinian, weapons, Security
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For 18 years Jeff Halper has been on the front lines of the Israel-Palestine
conflict, helping to rebuild Palestinian homes in the occupied territories
demolished by Israel. As he prepares to step down as head of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), he is publishing a new book on
Israel.
Halpers main conclusion is disturbing. Israel, he says, is globalising
Palestine.
The former anthropology professors wide-ranging research has forced him
into an expertise he is not entirely comfortable with: the global arms
industry.
Halper argues that Israel is cashing in both financially and
diplomatically on systems of control it has developed in the occupied
territories. It is exporting its know-how to global elites keen to protect
their privileges from both external and internal challengers.
In a world supposedly mired in an endless war on terror, we may all be
facing a future as Palestinians.
Halpers book, entitled War Against the People, due out next month, suggests
that Israel provides a unique window on some of the most important recent
developments in what he terms "securocratic warfare".
The books central thesis emerged as he tried to understand why tiny Israel
hits way beyond its weight economically, politically and militarily. How
does Israel have so much clout not only in the US and Europe but, more
surprisingly in countries as diverse as India, Brazil and China?
None of the usual explanations Holocaust guilt, the power of lobbies, even
the growth in Christian fundamentalism seemed to provide a complete
answer.
Global pacification
Zeev Maoz, an Israeli political science professor based in California, set
Halper on a different track. He has observed that one of the Zionist
movements fundamental tenets was to tie its wagon to a hegemon, serving
it, Halper says.
The Zionists did that early on by cultivating British support in Palestine.
Once established as a state, Israel helped the French and British at Suez in
1956, and after 1967 Israel served as a US surrogate in the Middle East
during the Cold War.
Today, Israels growing influence, Halper claims, reflects its positioning
of itself at the heart of the rapidly burgeoning global pacification
industry, advising and assisting militaries, police forces and homeland
security agencies around the world.
In the post-9/11 world, Israel is security king or securityland, as a
leading Israeli analyst recently described it.
And significantly, Israel is starting to parlay this usefulness into wider
political and diplomatic support, says Halper, even as the international
community grows exasperated by nearly 50 years of occupation. Such backing,
including from much of the Arab world, often remains hidden from view.
US president Dwight Eisenhowers grim warning from the 1950s that a rampant
military-industrial complex was threatening to become the real power
behind the façade of popular democracy needs updating, says Halper.
He describes the emergence of what he calls the MISSILE complex:
full-spectrum dominance by the US and its allies through the joint activity
of the military, internal security, surveillance, intelligence and law
enforcement.
After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes, Israel
is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as a
giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics
and weaponry.
An arms superpower
As we meet at his home in West Jerusalem, Halper is keen to stress that he
is only sketching the outlines of the new US-led global pacification
industry. He has entered largely uncharted waters. Journalists, analysts and
academics have shied away from the necessary research, he claims, preferring
to keep within their narrow specialisations.
Halper is interested in big-picture analysis, joining up the dots. And
doing so has forced him to explore unfamiliar territory, reading up on key
texts in security studies, poring over the works of terrorism experts, and
meeting decorated generals.
Halper points out that Israel spends about 8 percent of its GDP a year on
the military, about twice the per capita expenditure of the United States.
Despite its size, Israel has more military aircraft than any European
country.
Israel has four of the worlds top 100 arms manufacturers, and is ranked
among the top 10 arms dealing countries, in some assessments as high as
fourth place. The Global Militarisation Index has crowned Israel the most
militarised nation on the planet every year since 2007.
In May Israel won a new accolade, becoming a cyber superpower, its
companies selling about a tenth of the worlds computer and network security
technology.
That focus on the military and weapons systems has led Israel into official
military relations with 130 countries, many of them dictatorships known for
their human rights violations. Reports suggest that Israel engages in more
dubious and secretive deals with additional regimes.
This month the United Nations disclosed that Israel was breaking a western
arms embargo on selling weapons to South Sudan, fuelling the civil war
there. Critics have suggested that Israel also has advisers and trainers
operating clandestinely in South Sudan.
End of conventional wars
But Israels real talent, says Halper, has been to exploit a new emphasis on
securocratic warfare.
Wars between states are largely a thing of the past, he observes. In the
new kind of warfare, F-35 jets and nuclear weapons are far less useful. What
is needed now are the skills Israel has developed after a century of
counter-insurgency against the Palestinians. Israel is the go-to country
when it comes to securocratic warfare.
The need for this kind of warfare was highlighted following the US attack on
Iraq in 2003, he notes. Conventional wars between states have traditionally
involved three phases: operational preparations, the actual attack, and the
outcome.
But Iraq as well as Afghanistan before it showed a fourth stage: the
need for stabilisation and peace-keeping following regime change.
The pacification industry that has boomed post-9/11, Halper notes, is
spreading back to the West. As the military takes on many of the duties of a
police force in external wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, back home the
police become ever more militarised. Police in Ferguson look
indistinguishable from their compatriots in the US army in Iraq.
What we are seeing is the rise of the human-security state endless war
on terror, the world in a permanent state of emergency. The traditional
hard walls between the police and the military, between domestic and
overseas intelligence agencies between the FBI and the CIA , if you like
crumble.
Warrior cops
For elites who see danger lurking around every corner, Israel has the
answer: what he calls the warrior cop. For decades Israel has been
operating paramilitary forces like the Border Police, as well as
intelligence services like the Shin Bet, whose area of operational
responsibility is not constrained by distinctions between Israel and the
occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel created the model long ago of the military and police working
together, and now it is well-placed to train the world, Halper concludes.
That point was underscored this week when the Israeli government announced
that a long-time army officer, Gal Hirsch, would become the head of Israels
national police force.
What is at stake? Are the US and Europe not trying to defend themselves
against real terror threats?
Halper believes it is important to examine these developments within a
larger framework: the capitalist world system.
It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global terror
threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised,
creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US
and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands.
Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital and
labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into
wastelands or slums.
The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as
great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their
desperate plight.
This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has developed
its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper.
The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states
concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare,
migration threats, and much more.
The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel.
Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a
tourist destination, not a regional hegemon.
A place at NATOs table
Israels arms industry isnt just aimed at making money. It puts Israel at
the table with NATO countries. Israel conducts military exercises with
NATO, and helps develop Watchkeeper drones for the Europeans.
It also has increasingly close ties, says Halper, with regimes that are
ostensibly its enemy, such as Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are funding ISIS
[Islamic State], so how does one explain their alliance with Israel? The
common denominator is security politics. No two countries have interests
more alike than Israel and Saudi Arabia.
When the Saudis unveiled the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Halper argues,
they offered, in return for an end to the occupation, the Arab worlds
recognition of Israel as the regional hegemon.
Is Israels usefulness paying off diplomatically?
There are indications that increasingly it is. The Economist recently noted
that India, which has long track record of supporting the Palestinians, was
among five countries abstaining at the UN Human Rights Council last month on
a resolution criticising Israel for its conduct in Gaza last summer in a
51-day attack that killed more than 500 children.
The magazine added that Israeli officials believe the international
communitys growing dependence on its arms will reduce its vulnerability
over the long term to the boycott (BDS) movement.
Halper points out that Nigeria, another country that has become reliant on
Israeli arms, recently also betrayed its traditional support for the
Palestinians.
Nigeria saved Israel and the US great embarrassment last December when it
voted in the UN Security Council against a Palestinian resolution demanding
an end to the occupation. The US had feared that it would have to cast its
veto.
Halper emphasises that the US is still the worlds largest arms dealer by
some margin. But in its scramble to fill the niches, Israel helps shine a
light on the arms industrys true purpose: not security, but pacification.
"When you call it security, you shut down the debate. Who doesnt want
security? But when you reframe it is as pacification, the real goals
become much clearer.
- See more at:
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/endless-war-terror-
