Exclusive: Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is defiantly asserting permanent control over the occupied Golan Heights, a determination strengthened by Israel’s extraction of water and now possibly oil from the land, writes Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
On June 1, Israeli police burst into the home of an Israeli journalist, confiscated his computer and camera, and arrested him for “incitement to violence and terrorism.” His employer, Iran’s government broadcasting company, said the Druze reporter had antagonized the Netanyahu government with his hard-hitting reports on Israel’s plans for “stealing” oil from the Golan Heights, a 460-square-mile region of Syria seized by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967.
Such reports come at a particularly sensitive time for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other right-wing Israeli politicians, who are seeking to take advantage of the ongoing war in Syria to cement Israel’s control over the Golan. Their allies include such influential Americans as Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, all of whom are backing an oil-drilling operation of doubtful legality in the occupied region.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Besides its strategic value and potential oil, the Golan Heights is a major source of Israel’s fresh water and agricultural products and a leading tourist destination. If exploratory drilling unlocks as much oil as some geologists predict, the occupied region could turn Israel into “an energy powerhouse.”
Ethnic Cleansing
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, in violation of the United Nations’ 1967 General Assembly Resolution 242, which called for the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. Rejecting Israel’s claim, the U.N. Security Council immediate declared the attempted annexation “null and void and without international legal effect.” Within a few months, however, the controversy was overshadowed by the international crisis following Israel’s massive invasion of Lebanon.
As recently as January 2010, the U.N. General Assembly once again reaffirmed the illegality of Israel’s claim to the land and called on Israel to desist from “changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan and, in particular, to desist from the establishment of settlements” in the area. But that demand came much too late to stop Israel’s systematic land grab.
The respected Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported in 2010 that “Neglect and ruin are everywhere. . . . Apart from the four Druze villages at the foot of Mount Herman, [all Syrian villages] were all destroyed, in most cases down to their foundations. . . . Most were wiped off the face of the earth in a systematic process of destruction that began right after Israel’s occupation of the Golan.”
Challenging the myth that the local population simply fled during the 1967 war, the newspaper reported that the Israeli Defense Forces systematically expelled villagers and then began destroying their homes. An Israeli commander estimated that 20,000 civilians “were evacuated or left when they saw that the villages were starting to be destroyed by bulldozers and they had nowhere to return to.” Census figures indicate that more than 100,000 Syrians lost their homes and property.
Israel has no intention of ever letting them return, even if that means putting aside peace with Syria forever. Instead, Israel today has entrenched more than 20,000 of its own settlers in the Golan. Last year, the right-wing minister and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett announced a five-year goal of spending hundreds of millions of shekels to settle 100,000 more Israelis on the mountain.
Precious Water
This April, Prime Minister Netanyahu hosted a special cabinet meeting on the Heights, calling it “an integral part of the state of Israel in the new era.” He vowed that the region “will remain in the hands of Israel forever” rather than returning to “Syrian occupation.”
A portion of the separation wall built by the Israeli government jutting into the town of Bethlehem to enclose the tomb of Rachel within the Israeli zone. Many portions of the wall contain graffiti and artwork by the Palestinians and their visitors. (Photo credit: Ted Lieverman)
As usual, the U.N. Security Council rejected the Israeli claims, to no practical effect.
Israeli leaders acknowledge that a major reason they will never hand back the Golan Heights is economic: it provides precious fresh water to Israel.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states flatly, “The region’s strategic importance derives from its location, overlooking the Israeli Galilee region, and from the fact that it supplies Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) – a major source of water for Israel – with one third of its water.”
But there is another economic motive driving Israeli policy, as the recently arrested Druze journalist had reported: the smell of oil.
Last fall, an Israeli geologist working for the American company Genie Oil and Gas reported evidence of a huge oil find in the Golan Heights — with the potential to supply billions of gallons of crude, enough to make Israel a net oil exporter. Rejecting complaints by environmental groups, Israeli authorities granted the company a two-year extension of its right to carry out test drilling on 150-square-miles of occupied Syrian land.
Genie Oil and the Israel Lobby
Genie Oil is no ordinary drilling company. Its American CEO, Howard Jonas, is a major campaign donor to Netanyahu. The chairman of its Israeli subsidiary, Brig. Gen. Efraim Eitam, is a former leader of the National Religious Party who called for expelling Palestinians from the occupied territories and murdering their leaders.
He said of the Palestinian people, “These are creatures who came out of the depths of darkness. It is not by chance that the State of Israel got the mission to pave the way for the rest of the world, to militarily get rid of these dark forces.”
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch, one of the billionaire. (Photo credit: World Economic Forum)
The company’s shareholders include at least two billionaire supporters of Israel: multinational media magnate Rupert Murdoch and retired investment banker Lord Jacob Rothschild (whose family foundation donated the Knesset and Supreme Court buildings to Israel).
Murdoch and Rothschild also sit on Genie Oil’s well-connected “strategic advisory board.” Its chair, Michael Steinhardt, is a prominent Wall Street hedge fund manager and a major financial backer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish, neoconservative think tank noted for its fear-mongering against Palestinian leaders as well as Syria and Iran.
Other advisory board members include former Vice President Richard Cheney; James Woolsey, former CIA Director and chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Leadership Council who has called for tougher U.S. military intervention against Syria; former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who sponsored the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation bill; former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Potential for Regional Conflict
Genie’s drilling in the Golan is part of an energy boom that is transforming the outlook for Israel’s economy. Israel has raised “consternation” in Jordan by claiming a major oil reservoir near the Dead Sea, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Israel has also discovered enormous reserves of natural gas off the coast of Israel and Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea, and is reportedly close to signing a huge gas export agreement with Turkey. The latter deal could undercut long-term plans by Iran and Syria to export gas to Europe.
Map of Syria, showing Golan Heights in the lower left corner.
A report by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, released in December 2014, noted that recent energy discoveries put Israel “ahead of all East Mediterranean countries in terms of gas reserves and resource prospectivity.”
It warned, however, that conflicts over disputed ownership of oil and gas fields could lead to a regional war between Israel, Lebanon, Syria and other countries. It cited Israel’s drilling in the Golan Heights, in particular, as creating the “potential for another armed conflict between the two parties should substantial hydrocarbon resources be discovered.”
The report added ominously, “U.S. security and military support for its main allies in the case of an eruption of natural resource conflict in the East Mediterranean may prove essential in managing possible future conflict.”
Owing to Israel’s expulsion of most Golan residents in 1967, that occupied land rarely makes the news. Ever since the Six Day War, however, Israel’s conquest mentality has subverted peace negotiations with Syria. If Israel now succeeds in tapping commercial oil reserves underneath the Golan, its illegal occupation may once again fan the flames of regional conflict.
If the United States does help “manage” that conflict by supporting its ally, no one should be surprised — but it will represent a terrible dereliction of America’s duty to uphold international law and to seek a just and peaceful solution in the Middle East.
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012). Some of his previous articles for Consortiumnews were “Risky Blowback from Russian Sanctions”; “Neocons Want Regime Change in Iran”; “Saudi Cash Wins France’s Favor”; “The Saudis’ Hurt Feelings”; “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Bluster”; “The US Hand in the Syrian Mess”; and “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.” ]
I’ll right away snatch your rss as I can not to find your email subscription hyperlink or newsletter service.
Do you’ve any? Please let me recognise in order that
I may subscribe. Thanks.
June 6 (this Monday) was the 72nd anniversary of the Normandy invasion in WW2. But yesterday on June 8 was the 49th year since Holy Israel did its very best to murder the entire crew of the USS Liberty.
http://www.examiner.com/article/two-important-lessons-from-israeli-attack-on-the-uss-liberty
Last week I while speaking with an elderly neighbor about the Bible I had occasion to ask him his views on the behavior of Israel. This extremely devout person said Israel has a God-given land grant to all the local region, and anything they do is fully justified on that account. If the murders and thefts taking place in the ‘holy land’ were happening in his small town, he’d be in shock, but he was totally OK with anything being done to the Palestinians. It’s all part of God’s plan leading to the “Rapture” when the Christ-Killers will get what they truly deserve.
This is an insane religious sub-culture which continues to astound me.
The murderous and thieving little shithole of nation-state “covets” more than the resources of the Golan. Below is a current story at Google News:
Israeli minister wants to annex half of West Bank and kick out the Palestinians
They’re now openly talking about finishing the ethnic cleansing of the stolen West Bank. Oh, I’m sure they’ll wait for (or create) a distracting crisis, but it’s going to happen. Just a matter of the timing now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/08/israeli-minister-wants-to-annex-half-of-west-bank-and-kick-out-the-palestinians/
While Israel convinces its people that Palestinians are their enemy, they are colluding with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Washington to arm and stand up Al Qaeda against Syria.
As long as critics of Israel misdirect their anger and outrage over Israel’s belligerence against Israel as a nation and against its people in general, they will simply help encourage the fear and siege mentality the current regime in Jerusalem predicates its foreign and domestic policy upon. Were these critics to articulate a more nuanced approach, allying themselves with Israelis opposed to the current regime, and both exposing and condemning specific members of the Israeli government, the regime itself would be disarmed of one of its most valuable tools.
[…]
Breaking the fear and siege mentality Jerusalem has subjected its own population to for decades is the first step of breaking the regime itself. Not only does this regime represent a threat to Israel’s neighbors, but contrary to the propaganda it has used to sow fear among its own people, it is also a threat to Israel itself.
Who is Israel’s Biggest Enemy?
By Tony Cartalucci
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2016/05/who-is-israels-biggest-enemy.html
I believe I know why the Druze village was spared. The Druze in Israel support Israel, and 10% of Israeli officers are Druze. They have been traditionally persecuted by the Muslims for their beliefs, and turn to the Israelis for protection. But I believe whatever their grievances and fears, they should be supporting their fellow Palestinians, not Israelis (although I presume they are Israeli citizens, as residents of the Occupied Territories cannot join the Israeli army). They should be protesting with their brothers, regardless of the Druze’s religion. I understand they’re grateful to the Israelis for giving them equal rights, but they should be protesting the Israeli wars against Gaza. Also, I would think that with 10% of Israeli officers being Druze, those officers would be perfect to lead a future Palestinian army when Palestine gets it’s independence!
Also, the fact that Israel is holding on to the Golan for water and now oil will make it reluctant to give it up. But I presume that negotiations with Assad and the rebels, who by then presumably will have formed a transition government, and the desire to have better relations with said government, will cause them to give it up.
The “shill” says the Druze “turn to the Israelis for protection” and they’re “grateful to the Israelis for giving them equal rights”.
Reality says otherwise:
http://www.wrmea.org/2016-march-april/israel-plans-to-build-new-druze-town-on-land-belonging-to-displaced-palestinians.html
The IDF fought hard for Golan and its a strategic location why would they ever give it back?
A fascinating historic biography:
Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky
(1880 – 1940)
Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a Zionist activist, orator, and writer who founded the Betar Movement. He was also a soldier who founded the Jewish Legion during World War I.
Jabotinsky (born October 18, 1880; died August 4, 1940) was born as Vladimir into a middle-class Jewish family in the Russian city of Odessa. At the age of 18, he left Odessa to study law in Italy and Switzerland, where he also served as a foreign correspondent for several wellknown Russian newspapers. His reports and articles were widely read and soon became recognized as one of the brilliant exponents of Russian journalism. All his reports and articles were signed with his literary pseudonym “Altalena.”
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/jabotinsky.html
Because international law does not allow you to take land by force–but the Zios couldn’t care less about that.
First of all, Mike, the Golan Heights was returned to Syria as part of a peace treaty signed between Syria and Israel only a few years after the 6-Day War, before oil was even discovered. Therefore, by invading the Golan again just recently, the Zionist Entity has violated this treaty; and this violation was just about stealing this piece of land’s resources of water and oil.
Syria’s current President – Bashar al-Assad – has demanded the Golan’s return to Syrian sovereignty; that it was legally Syria’s by a signed treaty between the two nations.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, rejected Assad’s demand, insisting that the Golan was part of Israel and ill never be returned.
The zionists are chumps who have been set up for a terrible reckoning by the nation that appears to be their collaborator and enabler: England. It is by the hidden history of The Golan Heights that the subtle nature of this set up can be seen. The zionists believe that they made “a deal” with England for the entirety of the illegal sub-mandate of Palestine(severed from The Mandate Of Syria). Originally The Golan was part of the illegal sub-mandate of Palestine, but England severed The Golan and gifted it to the French controlled illegal sub-mandate of Syria. England’s reasons have never been revealed, but it is patently an obscure act. It has set up a trap for the zionists as the sub-mandate of Syria gained independence as The Syrian Arab Republic with The Golan as it’s sovereign territory, so despite feeling “ripped off” the zionists can never legally possess it. The zionists also got “suckered” in 1948, they thought they were free to invade and occupy all of Palestine, but Jordan denied them the West Bank for 20 years, so that their 1967 conquest would never appear legitimate, and is thoroughly so today. Clearly, England foresaw that the zionists would invade the Golan and hold onto it like an idiotic dog with a bone, which would lead to the unraveling of all of their zionist fantasies. If they had been content with the 1948 borders all would be secure, but the zionists have been provoked into overreaching to their ultimate ruin.
[…] it is Clinton’s long-term, large-scale commitment to Israel that goes far beyond her public speeches of loyalty and fealty to the Jewish state. Hillary Clinton’s entire political career has been intimately dependent on Zionist money, Zionist mass media propaganda and Zionist Democratic Party operations.
In exchange for Clinton’s dependence on political support from the Zionist power configuration in the US, she would have become the major conduit of confidential information from the US to Israel and the transmission belt promoting Israel-centric policies within the US government.
The entire complex of Clinton-Israel linkages and correspondences has compromised the US intelligence services, the State Department and Pentagon.
Secretary Clinton went to extraordinary lengths to serve Israel, even undermining the interests of the United States. It is bizarre that she would resort to such a crude measure, setting up a private e-mail server to conduct state business. She blithely ignored official State Department policy and oversight and forwarded over 1,300 confidential documents and 22 highly sensitive top-secret documents related to the ‘Special Access Program’. She detailed US military and intelligence documents on US strategic policies on Syria, Iraq, Palestine and other vital regimes. The Inspector General’s report indicates that ‘she was warned’ about her practice. It is only because of the unusual stranglehold Tel Aviv and Israel’s US Fifth Column have over the US government and judiciary that her actions have not been prosecuted as high treason. It is the height of hypocrisy that government whistleblowers have been persecuted and jailed by the Obama Administration for raising concerns within the Inspector General system of oversight, while Secretary Clinton is on her way to the Presidency of the United States!
Hillary Clinton: Electing a Foreign Spy for President?
By James Petras
http://petras.lahaine.org/b2-img/petras_hclinton.pdf
to listen is to learn, to ignore is to fail — thanks for the Petras, Abe.
I am going to assume by “Zionist” you mean Christian Zionist and the Israeli lobby, which is not anti-Semitic, rather than Jews, which is.
But I would think that while all the right-wing Christian evangelicals are Zionists, as they need the State of Israel for the End Times, right-wing evangelicals do not form the Democratic Party base, and while I presume some right-wing evangelicals are Democrats, and presumably some are members of the Democratic Establishment, I presume most aren’t, although the Democratic Establishment is pro-Israel.
I am going to assume by “Zionist mass media propaganda” you mean Israeli PR and a few newcasters in the U.S corporate media who are Zionists – Christian Zionists, as most people in the media aren’t Jewish. I also presume by “Zionist money”, you mean the Israeli lobby giving her money, in particular a rich Jewish man (I forgot his name) who is one of Clinton’s advisors and was mentioned in a Consortium News article about him and Clinton, and rich Christian Zionists giving her money.
But your claim that the Democratic Party is mostly Zionist I do not believe, and I conclude it is anti-Semitic. This is backed up by your support of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Before you say I am a pro-Israel shill, I should tell you I am pro-Palestine, and I want Netanyahu, his party, and all members of his coalition, out of office. NOW. I also want a Palestinian state along the 1948 borders, with Jerusalem being international.
anti-Zionism does not necessarily equate anti-Semitism precisely because they do not operate against the same object (i.e. anti-Zionism is opposed to Zionism and/or the state of Israel while anti-Semitism opposes the jews defined biologically writ large regardless of Zionism or the existence of Israel) and nor are they a consequence of each other (i.e. anti-Zionism can held while not being anti-Semitic, while anti-Semitic beliefs can be held while being pro-Zionist).
Now in Petras’ case it is fairly clearly he is not anti-Semitic, but rather anti-Zionist because he doesn’t subscribe to the belief that the jews are a biological entity (3) and he doesn’t associate all jews as being part of the jewish lobby or the jewish political elite. (4) The former is the necessary part of being an anti-Semite as it states one direct logic in how regards the jews, while the latter is simply a necessary clarification to Petras’ belief in the existence of the jewish lobby given that he is not an anti-Semite.
In essence Petras thinks that there are many progressive jews, but that these progressive jews have had their voices shut out of the debate on the Middle East, while hawkish neo-conservative jews who have hijacked American foreign policy for the interests of another state: Israel. There is nothing anti-Semitic about that view precisely because it is a statement of opposition to Zionism and Israel
http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2013/07/is-james-petras-anti-semitic.html
Rikhard, I am going to assume by “shill” you mean “hasbara troll”.
Based on that assumption, I might conclude that you’re a “shill”. But that would not be anti-Semitic.
Speaking of your support of conspiracy theories, we can include your belief that Trump is “good at business deals, which would be good for diplomacy” (see your comment at https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/07/declaring-clintons-premature-victory/)
At least there is agreement on one point:
All members of Netanyahu’s coalition (including Clinton and Trump) should be kept out of office in the United States. NOW.
Sorry, but actually ALL of Palestine is occupied territory.
This is the same six day war when the Israeli’s attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171 Americans who were serving their countrymen back home in the good old USA. Just thought I’d throw that into the mix of things.
Expect things to get much worse when if Hillary “Shabbat goy” Clinton becomes president. There are rumors that she will appoint Victoria Nuland as Sec. of State.
I agree but they would be just as bad with Trump.Adelson gave him 100 million dollars for a reason.
How much water does that unneeded company Sodastream use?
This story is a perfect example of how things are really done in the world of geopolitics and big business. As the Athenian spokesman declared in the Melian Dialogue 2500 years ago, “…right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
The occupation of the Golan Heights is illegal in every possible sense, and also immoral in the highest degree. No matter! The United Nations cannot do anything about it, and the most powerful nation in the world – the USA – chooses, deliberately and of its own free will, to support the criminal annexation.
How can anyone, under these circumstances, believe or trust a single word that the US government utters? Or accept as sincere any mention by the US government of law, treaties, or morality? It is perfectly clear that it has no use for any of those things, and chooses to “do what it can” and let “the weak suffer what they must”.
So we should all understand that the pious talk about human rights, law, and the like proceeding from American politicians is so much hot air. As the old saying goes, “a good thrashing is the only language they understand”.
TOM WELSH…
You are on target Tom.
Thanks to Jonathan Marshall for excellent reporting on this issue.
Of course, for some of us the very idea of Zionism was a hoax by
educated con artists to exploit existing 19th c entury Jewish fears
for their own benefit. No wonder Theodore Herzl’s close associate
Dr.Max Landau saw immediately that the release of Herzl’s diaries
on his death (1904) would make this clear to all. A more modern
example but similar in style see Norman Finkelstein’s THE
HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY.
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Never in the history of our planet has so few dominated so many.
They call it democracy.sheesh.
Never? It would be more true to say that never in the history of our planet have the many over-ruled the ruling elite in anything greater than a piddling tribe or city-state. Our American experiment with democracy on a Continental scale has only produced a temporary crisis for the Tory Empire. London is still the capital of the Tory Empire, not D.C., not Jerusalem; they are but London’s right-hand and left-hand “strongmen” (via Wall Street and Cecil Rhodes Zion Project). And Beijing will eventually be brought-to-heel via Hong Kong (Wall Street East). Russia will be assimilated by the Synarchy Movement for Empire (SME). But I doubt they have the blessing of Earth’s actual government…The Creator’s Grand Hierarchy of Gods & Goddesses (or Ministering Angels if one prefers), so it is all a project of Vanity. That’s why I’m growing silent on these sites. Goodby.
Brad Owen —– Cecil Rhodes Zion Project
http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=Jabotinsky
Cecil Rhodes Zion Project — Brad Owen
(excerpt)
Jabotinsky’s Imperial Roots
Every Likud prime minister in Israel has been an avowed promoter of the policies of Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Some were personal proteges, others extremist leaders within his movement. The father of current Likud leader and candidate for prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was Jabotinsky’s personal secretary.
The Likud prime ministers are considered an elite grouping. They are often referred to as Jabotinsky’s Princes, and to this day, Jabotinsky is omnipresent within the Jewish right wing. His picture adorns the Likud website, and U.S. Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman has had a framed photo of him on his desk.
Jabotinsky was a wholly owned and created asset of the British Empire. He was controlled by a political network led by Leo Stennet Amery, who became Britain’s most prominent Imperial spokesman and political organizer.
Amery’s circle included the greatest names of British imperialism: Cecil John Rhodes, the self-avowed enemy of the American republic; the Coefficients group; and Alfred Milner, Rhodes’ mentor, who ran Rhodes’ secret society.
Jabotinsky and the creation of a Jewish Legion became Amery’s number one project, as the British moved to take over Palestine at the close of World War I.
Amery’s vision was that of Rhodes, who, in 1877, wrote his first “Last Will and Testament”. Only a bit more than a decade had passed since the British plan to dismember the United States in a Civil War had failed, bitterly. Rhodes, a rabid British race imperialist, had amassed his fortune through the exploration and mining of gold in Africa. Rhodes wrote that the purpose of his Will was:
“To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands … and especially the … entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, … the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, … the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire…” (emphasis added).
Rhodes’ secret society, and the intricacies of how it operated, are detailed in Carroll Quigley’s book “The Anglo-American Establishment”. Quigley describes the British power elite and their purpose at the turn of the century. They combined important press outlets, created political institutions, and used financial power to affect their policy. This elite group consisted of the Venetian Cecil family; the political and financial trustees of Rhodes’ Trust, in which Alfred Milner was key; various banking institutions, including Lazard Freres; and the British royal family. Quigley describes a small inner core of collaborators, with two concentric circles of semi-witting and non-witting conspirators from Britain’s aristocracy and financial elite.
By and large, they shared the aims of Rhodes’ Will. They had one major enemy, the American System of Political Economy. It threatened the existence of the British Empire, which depended upon a mercantilist system of securing cheap raw materials from colonized, backward parts of the world, and shipping them back to England for industrial production and military use.
At the turn of the century, there were two powers in the world that represented the American system: the United States of America, and Germany, which had built its economy on the model of America’s great economist Henry C. Carey. Following the stipulations of Rhodes’ Will, his collaborators sparked World War I to dismantle a hated and threatening Germany, and to carve up Europe. They sought to secure and expand their colonial holdings by acquiring much of the Ottoman Empire, which would give them its oil holdings, as well as secure Palestine as a military buffer to the Suez Canal. In order to accomplish these goals, they also worked non-stop to trap the United States into collaborating with their warring schemes, and sought to diminish America’s industrial economy from within.
Lord Alfred Milner, who ran Rhodes’ Trust, was central to the secret cabal. He had been British High Commissioner for Africa, had won the Boer War, and had united South Africa as one political entity under British rule. That act gave Britain looting rights for the most important raw materials on the continent, and he derived much power from these accomplishments.
At the close of the Boer War, Milner recruited a group of the best and the brightest from Oxford University to assist him in establishing British rule in Africa. He recruited them to his philosophy and became each and every one’s mentor. Known as Milner’s Kindergarten or The Kindergarten, these individuals returned to London and would play a major role in both World War I and World War II.
As World War I approached, Rhodes’ secret society, under the direction of Milner and various other collaborators, went to work. Both Liberal and Conservative, they held in common a rabid racial imperialism. Their own writings detail their thoughts and aims. For propaganda purposes, they created the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), but they also purchased the Times of London and ran other crucial press organs to rally the public behind their aims.
Milner’s personal protege was Leo Stennet Amery. Quigley describes their relationship:
“Amery can be regarded as Milner’s political heir. From the beginning of his own political career in 1906 to the death of Milner in 1925, he was more closely associated with Milner’s active political life than any other person … his associations with Milner became steadily more intimate. In his last years of public office, Milner was generally assisted by Amery (1917-1921), and when he died it was Amery who arranged the public memorial service and controlled the distribution of tickets.”
To understand today’s Likud and the rest of the right wing in Israel, one must understand Amery and Milner and their role in shaping the British Empire. They used Zionism to secure the oilfields of the Middle East and defense of the Suez Canal. They stated this openly, as did their Christian Zionist supporters. This was geopolitics in the mode of Sykes-Picot.
http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=Jabotinsky