Israel Palestine  Infos

Uri Avnery

August 7, 2010

                                               The Elders of Anti-Zion

I WAS shaking with fear.

A well-groomed gentleman appeared on TV. He was identified as the chief of an association called Re’uth (“Sight”), whose aim is to monitor the groups which deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

What they have uncovered is indeed frightful. The enemies of Israel, we were told, no longer believe that they can destroy Israel by force of arms. Instead, they have adopted a new strategy: to bring about the collapse of Israel by denying its very legitimacy.

The initiatives of small local groups in various countries are not what they appear to be. Far from it! They are part of a world-wide, organized and coordinated conspiracy, which uses every means to achieve their nefarious aim. Unlike the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the forged document that was produced a hundred years ago, this is a genuine plot, something like the “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion”.    

Only one detail was missing in the disclosure: where is the secret headquarters of this international conspiracy?

Happily, I am in a position to provide the missing information. Shocking as it may sound, the headquarters of the Elders of Anti-Zion is located in Jerusalem.

THE RE’UTH organization is a group of amateurs and only deals with superficial symptoms. Unlike them, I have undertaken to conduct an in-depth investigation.

Who are the secret agents of the conspiracy that is now threatening the legitimacy of Israel? Who are the people who supply all the anti-Israel groups throughout the world with deadly ammunition against us?    

Here is a preliminary list of the most dangerous conspirators:

At the head of the list there appears, of course, Avigdor Ivett Lieberman, who used his cunning to attain the position of Foreign Minister of Israel.

In less than a year and a half, Lieberman has managed to undermine the legitimacy of Israel beyond repair in many countries.

His success in getting appointed as foreign minister is, by itself, a staggering achievement for someone with his background. He is perceived throughout the world as an unbridled racist, compared to whom France’s Jean-Marie le Pen and Austria’s Joerg Haider look like pious democrats. Since being appointed to his position, many of his international colleagues refuse to be seen in his company. They avoid him like the plague.  

Since then, Lieberman has succeeded in getting Israel hated in many countries.  He has called the Swedes and the Norwegians anti-Semites. He has insulted the Turks, when his obedient deputy publicly humiliated the Turkish ambassador by seating him at a lower level than himself. He has told the President of Egypt to “go to hell”. It seems that he sits in his office every morning, spinning the globe and asking himself: “Which new country can I insult today?”

Now there is hardly any country in the world prepared to receive him, except under duress. His activity as Foreign Minister is limited mostly to the four countries connected with his origins: Moldova, Belarus. Ukraine and Kazakhstan. No Israeli foreign minister could possibly have done more to damage the legitimacy of his country.

BUT LIEBERMAN is up against a very serious contender: the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.

During the last few days he has achieved the impossible: turning the Lebanese army, too, into an enemy.

To appreciate the magnitude of this achievement, one has to remember that only four years ago, Israel practically issued an ultimatum demanding that the Lebanese army be deployed on the border with Israel. It was one of Israel’s conditions for ending Lebanon War II. Only the Lebanese army, the master strategists in Jerusalem decreed, could ensure quiet on the border. They treated the UN force, UNIFIL, with thinly veiled contempt.

This week, the Lebanese army opened fire on Israeli troops, killing a battalion commander. How could this happen? In several places there are tiny enclaves between the Israeli border fence and the recognized international border. As far as sovereignty is concerned, these enclaves belong to Israel. The land itself, however, is worked by Lebanese villagers. The Israeli army decided to “trim” the trees in these areas in order to facilitate observation.

The Lebanese announced in advance that they were opposed. UNIFIL asked Israel to wait for the return of its commander from abroad, so as to enable him to mediate. The Israeli army refused to wait and sent a bulldozer. When the arm of the monster reached over the fence, and after warning shouts, the Lebanese soldiers opened fire.

Would a normal person have endangered his relations with the Lebanese army for some branches of a tree? Certainly not. What better proof that Barak is acting under the orders of the Elders of anti-Zion?

But this is only the latest instance. It is overshadowed by the Gaza War (“Cast Lead”). There is no need to reiterate the details of that operation: the wholesale killing of civilians, including hundreds of women and children; the demolition of buildings, including schools and mosques; the use of cruel weapons, such as white phosphorus; the denial of medical aid to the wounded; the blocking of escape routes; and so on and so forth.

“Cast Lead” caused a world-wide shock. In many countries, anti-Israeli groups sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. Far-away Gaza became the center of world attention.   

For Barak that was not enough. He persuaded the government to boycott the inquiry commission appointed by the UN, headed by a Zionist Jewish judge. The commission did its work nevertheless, and its findings detailed accusations of Israeli war crimes. Instead of investigating, admitting, apologizing and paying compensation, Barak started a campaign of personal defamation against the judge, which only magnified the damage to Israel. Belatedly, the Israeli army started investigations of its own, which recently confirmed the main findings of the Goldstone report. What does this say about Barak?

But even this was not enough for him. It was the Gaza flotilla incident which revealed his full capacity for delegitimizing Israel. If the ships had been allowed to deliver their small, symbolic cargo to Gaza, the matter would have been forgotten in a day or two. Barak’s military operation achieved the opposite: for months now the world has been in uproar, the Gaza blockade has remained at the center of world attention, our important relationship with Turkey has been irreparably damaged.

When the UN requested Israel to cooperate with an international investigation, Barak reacted with contempt. And instead of appointing at least a State Board of Inquiry with full powers, the Israeli government announced a powerless commission, lacking any credibility and without serious terms of reference. And after all the damage had already been caused, the Israeli government agreed this week to cooperate with the UN commission after all. It’s the classic story of the servant who brought his master rotten fish from the market. When told to choose between eating the fish himself, being flogged or being banished from the town, he chose eating the fish, but could not finish them. When he was being soundly flogged, he could not bear it anymore and therefore chose banishment. So he ate the rotten fish, was flogged and was banished.   

Without a doubt, the Elders of anti-Zion should confer on Barak the title of “hero of delegitimization”.

THE THIRD place on the list is certainly due to the Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai.

Everybody knows that Israel is the State of the Holocaust Survivors, a state that embodies the basic values of the Jewish people. That is the centerpiece of our Hasbarah (literally “Explaining” – in reality propaganda).

The eminent proof for this pretension should have been our attitude towards pitiful refugees, the survivors of massacres who have reached our country and ask for asylum,

If so, why does the Minister of the Interior do everything in his power to prove the very opposite?

For years now, the ministry has been mistreating the refugees from Africa and other places. The Darfur survivors, who risk their lives to reach Israel through the Sinai desert, are caught in the streets by special manhunt-squads of the ministry, thrown into prison and then deported.

This week, the government decided to expel 400 refugee children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never known any other homeland. This evokes tragic memories of the 1930s, when Jewish refugees from Germany could find no asylum anywhere and were returned to the Nazi hell.

True, Israel is not the only country in the world that ill-treats “illegal immigrants”. Many countries, from the US to France, do the same. But Israel claims to be The Jewish State, and mistreatment of refugee children is a mortal blow to the basis of its legitimacy.

THE LIST is long.

The other central pillar of the legitimacy of Israel is the claim that we are “The Only Democracy in the Middle East”.

If so, what can we say about the Jerusalem judge who condemned a man whose new Israeli lady “friend” willingly had sex with him after a few minutes’ acquaintance, and found him guilty of rape only because he had hidden from her that he was – God forbid! – an Arab?

What can we say about the Minister of Police who is loudly supporting a policeman who put his revolver to the head of a thief and shot him at point-blank range, while the man was sitting in his car and trying to escape, because he was an Arab?

All these doings – and many more – are contributing every day to the worldwide conspiracy that is aiming at the delegitimization of the State of Israel. But who is the head of the plotters?

All the evidence points in one direction: the man who appointed all these agents to their positions, where they are doing irreparable damage: Binyamin Netanyahu. A master conspirator who hides behind the façade of an incompetent politician.

AS IS well-known, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were concocted by the secret police of the Russian Czar, based on a 19^th century tract originally written against Napoleon III.

The “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion” are being composed these days by Binyamin Netanyahu and his cronies.