----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August 2018)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"How do you spell ICE in German? GESTAPO." (S. Jonas, July 2025)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Paine, December 23, 1776
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a few weeks ago, I published a column in this space entitled "Can What the Israeli Nationalist Government is doing to the Palestinians be Defined as 'Genocide'?" Based on the history of the mass murders of defined ethnic groups, my answer to that question was no. Historically, the term has been applied to what the Turkish government did to a large Armenian population in 1915, with the deaths-estimate ranging up to 2 million. It is of course applied to the Nazi policy towards Jews within its empire, the "Holocaust," with death totals estimated to be 6 million. And in the view of some (including myself), it can also be applied to what the European settlers in North America did to the Native American population, especially in the 19th century.
In that column on Israeli Nationalism, I reviewed my discussion of the Israeli policy that, over a number of years, advocated the expulsion of Palestinians from all of the territory contained in the original "British Palestinian Mandate" as established by the League of Nations following the conclusion of World War I. One of its leading advocates of Arab/Palestinian expulsion was a post-World I e'migre' to the Mandate named Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Until now, the policy of Expulsion has indeed been carried out, in practice, at various times in the history of the State of Israel, from within its boundaries. Those boundaries State have varied over time, established and re-established by a series of events, including: the UN Partition Resolutions of 1947-48, and the subsequent Arab invasions/threat-of-invasion: the "Six Arab Armies Invasion of 1948," The "Six-Day War" of 1967, and the "Yom Kippur War" of 1973.
As it happened, the three "Arab Invasions" all ended with Israeli defeats of the Arab forces involved. And they all led to an expansion of the boundaries of the State of Israe l. Nevertheless, since 1948, the so-called "Two-State Solution" has, off-and-on, technically "been on the table." However, expulsion of the Palestinians from all-or-part of the territories within the UN settlement of 1948 that they have occupied since that time has been on the agenda of the Israeli Right, off-and-on too. However, it has been on that agenda, for public consumption both at home and especially abroad (and especially in the United States) very soto voce.
But, as I have noted previously, the advocacy for the expulsion of the Palestinians first from the full territory of the British Mandate, and then from those sectors of the Mandate which were allotted to them by the UN in 1947-48, has been very much on the unspoken agenda of the Israeli Right. Again, one can refer to one of the original promoters of the policy of expulsion, going back to the 1920s, at the beginning of the time of the United National Mandate: the aforementioned Ze'ev Jabotinsky. And it is clear from what private, nationalist Israelis have been doing for some years now in the technically Palestinian "West Bank" sector, accompanied by governmental road-and-wall building, crop destruction, and the establishment of Jewish settlements within the West Bank, that this is the long-range Right-wing Israeli (what I call "Israeli Nationalist") policy, on the ground. In fact, recently construction has been undertaken for a road that would divide the "West Bank" in such a way that no form of a "two-state solution" could ever be achieved.
However, complete, formal, expulsion of the Palestinian population from any portion of the on-paper division of the original Mandate-Territories has never been on the official, national agenda of any Israeli government. Until now. According to the Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, "plans to facilitate the mass emigration of Palestinians from Gaza remain under discussion and have merely been 'frozen' by US President Donald Trump. . . In the end, there is no real solution for Gaza without this migration. . . 80 percent want to emigrate. We are checking this in all kinds of surveys. Hamas isn't letting them and there are no countries in the world absorbing them. [Should other countries be open to taking in Gazans, Katz said] the Israeli government is organized and prepared to get them out -- by sea, by air, by every way possible." (See also: Click Here, and Click Here; Click Here.)
These developments, in the context of what the Israeli government is doing both in Gaza and in the West Bank (there, beyond what the Settlers themselves are doing) have bought about some major changes in policy-towards-Israel of certain Western European countries. For example, the British government has taken the relatively minor step of ending any commercial arrangements with any Israeli companies operating in the West Bank. Given Trump's long-standing support for Netanyahu, and the now melding of U.S. and Israeli military forces, one finds it surprising that as of now the U.S government has officially, at least, adopted a "wait-and-see" policy on the matter. At a more major level, there has been a Reset of UK, French, and Canadian policy towards Israel, establishing sanctions against the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government has of course protested over this change.
A few final comments for now:
1. Given his long-standing support for the Israeli Nationalist government under Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump is caught between a rock and a hard place on Expulsion.
2. What does AIPAC do? Ooops. If they say nothing, or say something mealy-mouthed, about Israeli now-open Expulsion policy, it will be much easier for Democratic Candidates to separate themselves from them. If they continue their full-throated support of Israeli Nationalism, that opens up a space between themselves and Trump, tiny for now, but a space to be sure (which also makes it easier for Israeli-Nationalist-critical Democrats).
3. If you think that Mossad has not acquired a pretty full copy of the Epstein Files, you've got another think coming.
Post Article Comment and Rate This Article
