There may seem an obvious contradiction between Trump’s calls for Israel to be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza, and his statements that he wants Israel “end the war quickly,” both of which he has made over the last year or so. The easiest way to explain it is simply that he is a liar, simply says what his audience wants to hear, and is smart enough to word these statements vaguely enough so that they are open to interpretation. In that sense, the circle is easy to square: Trump wants to allow Israel to go even harder, as hard as humanly possible, in order to “finish the job” (ie genocide), and that way, he can “end the war quickly.” “Peace through strength” and all that.
However, there is another way of looking at this. Israel has already won the war in Gaza, we must regretfully admit, notwithstanding many illusions to the contrary. A recent UN report showed that Gaza had been set back 7 decades, while another claimed that it would take 350 years to rebuild to what was there before. It would take at least 14 years just to clear the 42 million tonnes of rubble. Everything necessary for human existence has been destroyed. Probably several hundred thousand over time, “by hook or by crook,” have crossed over into Egypt, and from there “to some other corner of the world,” according to Professor Norman Finkelstein, and can never return; the numbers of dead are estimated to be many times the official 43,000 count. Sure, Netanyahu has not been able to drive all 2.3 million Palestinians into Egypt as initially hoped because the Egyptian al-Sisi dictatorship hates Palestinians as much as Israel does, and so shows … “resistance” to the new Nakbah. And sure, the second plan, the currently under-implementation ‘Generals’ Plan’, to push everyone remaining in northern Gaza into the absurdly crowded south, across the Netzarim Corridor which cuts across the middle of Gaza that will remain occupied by Israeli troops, and hence annex the norther half, is not complete, but has been in operation for the last 6 weeks and there are only estimated to be 75-95,000 Palestinians remaining in the north, and they are under immediate threat of mass starvation; Israel now admits it will not allow anyone to return.
Just to clarify, we often hear that Israel has not achieved any of its “stated aims,” namely to “destroy Hamas” and get the hostages home, “all it has achieved is genocide.” Genocide, however, has been precisely Israel’s aim all along; the “stated aims” are just smokescreens. It never had anything to do with the absurd idea of “destroying Hamas”, because everyone, especially Israeli leaders, knows that a resistance movement cannot be “destroyed” as long as people are under brutal occupation; one might claim therefore that Israel is removing the people themselves in order to destroy the resistance movement based among them, but even that is putting things in reverse: the aim is to remove the people, and having a “stated aim” that is absurd and unachievable allows Israel to just keep on carrying out the actual aim. Though of course a resistance movement like Hamas can be drastically weakened, and this has been achieved, alongside its leadership being wiped out. As for the hostages, if returning them alive was the goal, Israel would have agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange long ago; no rational person thinks this can be achieved via genocidal bombing, which has already killed plenty of Israeli hostages.
Why then has Netanyahu resisted calls by a host of Israeli political leaders of the Zionist “centre” (who would not be “centre” anywhere else in the world, eg, hard war criminals like former prime minister Ehud Olmert), and, toothlessly, by Biden, to wind up the war – as Olmert assessed back in May that “we have seen a genuine, impressive and unprecedented victory” – and do a deal to get Israeli hostages back? Seems to me it has a lot to do with Netanyahu wanting to get Trump back into power. Keep the war and killing going, know that Biden/Harris will do nothing except issue statements of concern, Trump returns. Indeed, Trump even asked Netanyahu to not sign any ceasefire/hostage exchange deal before the US elections as it might ruin his election chances.
So, now that Trump has returned, well, kill a while longer, especially to complete the Generals Plan in northern Gaza, so by the time Trump assumes full office in late January, he will be able to say “OK Bibi, that’s enough for now,” and Bibi will (perhaps) be in a position to finally sign on to a ceasefire as he has “finished the job,” and Americans and the world see that Trump “ends the war”.
OK, but in that case, if Israel has indeed finished the job, why would it need to continue it just to help get Trump elected, because in that case, why would it even need Trump? Since Biden/Harris already quite happily let Israel “finish the job” as Trump requested of them, without even needing his requests?
Yes, absolutely, but Gaza is not the prize. For Israel, the prize is the West Bank, which is about 17 times the size of Gaza, despite having an almost similar number of people. Gaza needed to be destroyed, because it is a giant refugee camp from 1948 Israel; a living embodiment of the first Nakbah. In itself though, its value is limited, though of course Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has stated that once the population is removed from Gaza by driving them into Egypt or the desert, it will be prime real estate as its “waterfront property could be very valuable.” But the West Bank is the real deal.
Netanyahu therefore has good reason to believe that Trump and his far-right team (and on the issue of Israel/Palestine, there is no difference between the Trumpist/nativist far-right and the neoconservative far-right in the Republican Party) will allow Israel to outright annex the West Bank, or at least annex about half of it, where the Israeli “settlers” and their settler-only highways, cutting up the Palestinian population centres, are located. Indeed, as soon as Trump’s election victory was announced, Netanyahu appointed an extreme right-wing supporter of West Bank “settlement,” Yechiel Leiter, as new Israeli ambassador to the US. Leiter has called for Israeli ‘sovereignty’ over the West Bank, and is a former member of the extreme right-wing Jewish Defense League, founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, which was designated a terrorist organisation by the US and even by Israel in the 1990s; now Itamar Ben-Gvir, another Kahanist, is Netanyahu’s Minister of National Security.
Outright annexation of the West Bank, or the parts colonised by Israel, would leave the major Palestinian population centres as mere reservations, towns with no economy and no land, to rot, its people merely cheap labour at best for Israeli bosses. Of course, that is already the de facto situation, but if Netanyahu were to formally annex the region and Trump were to recognise it, then perhaps Trump and even Netanyahu may be happy to call these disconnected towns a “Palestinian state” and demand Palestinians accept this as the “deal of the century” if they really want “peace.”
Not that Biden, Harris and the Democrats would have done a thing to stop Netanyahu if his regime did go ahead an annex all or half the West Bank; but it is very unlikely that they would give it formal recognition. Throughout the past year, even while continuing to arm the genocide and allow Israel to cross every ‘red line’, Biden and his ministers have continually said that after Israel was done “defending itself,” there would need to be a settlement based on the “two-state solution,” that Palestinians also have some rights and so on. Of course, Biden’s “two-state solution” is not the international consensus two states, ie, based on a Palestinian state in all of the territory occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital; but nevertheless, any idea of “two states” with at least enough basis for the reactionary Arab states to sign on to is still based on the international legality of UN resolutions, rather than by formalising the violation of them as Netanyahu and Trump prefer. Even on Gaza, while allowing Israel to do everything, the Biden government has still said there can be no annexation or re-settlement of Gaza or part of it.
So, while it would do nothing if Israel formally annexed the West Bank, and would probably continue to arm Israel to the teeth anyway, a Harris-led government would however express a lot of “concern” about the move, declare that it does not help the “peace process,” tut-tut a lot about it, keep talking about the need for a half-baked “two state solution,” talk about “diplomacy” and “international law,” refuse to give it formal recognition. With Trump, Netanyahu doesn’t need to listen to such sermons; he gets full recognition of the annexation of the West Bank, and then everyone can blame the Palestinians for rejecting “the best ever offer.”
“HUWARA, West Bank, Oct 6 (Reuters) – A Jewish settler killed a 19-year-old Palestinian during a settler attack on the occupied West Bank town of Huwara on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Residents said a group of settlers had erected a tent in Huwara, held prayers and later marched through the town. Some of them were carrying arms and began vandalising shops and cars, they said. One of the settlers shot university student Labib Dumaidi, who later died of his wounds in hospital, the residents said.”
As this settler murder was a rather run-of-the mill event in occupied Palestine, clearly there was no “ceasefire” for Palestinians on October 6.
What they mean is that there was a ceasefire for Israelis on October 6, and before. Of course there has been no ceasefire for Palestinians since 1948, when they were ethnically cleansed from their homes and land to create a Jewish state on their land, at a cost of 15,000 Palestinians killed by Zionist terror gangs, something, understandably enough, they have never accepted; the process then continued after 1967 in complete international illegality (despite the lack of any international sanctions) in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza; and has been ongoing ever since. And since these territories conquered in 1967 are recognised by international law to be under illegal occupation, then resistance, including armed resistance, of the occupied Palestinian people is recognised as their legal right; clearly, if another country is illegally occupying yours, there is by definition no “ceasefire.”
But since that begins a long way back, and is such a sweeping picture that many simply refuse to accept the reality that dispossession, occupation, ongoing land theft, apartheid and complete Israeli impunity over Palestinian life is no “ceasefire” and leads naturally to armed and civil resistance, let’s begin a little closer to the date, the last 20 years for example.
In the last 20 years, the number of Palestinian civilians killed (4331) is over 22 times the number of Israeli civilians (195) within this just war of resistance against occupation (much the same for total casualties, 6936 Palestinians versus 330 Israelis or 21 times); thus even if we make the caveat that the right of armed resistance does not give that resistance the right to target civilians, then Israel is 22 times more guilty than the Palestinian resistance of such violations, and needless to say killing thousands of Palestinian civilians does not make the period a “ceasefire” for them. Even during the Hamas suicide attacks in the early 2000s, the numbers of Palestinians killed was double, triple or quadruple the numbers of Israelis; and starting from 2004 when these attacks declined then ended completely in 2005, and thereafter, as the number of Israeli casualties reduced to close to zero, the number of Palestinians killed increased dramatically, as the first chart below shows:
These killings include such major Israeli atrocities in Gaza as Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, when Israel killed some 1400 Palestinians, 82 percent of whom were civilians, and as usual massively attacked human infrastructure, with egregious crimes including the killing of entire families, attacks on schools, use of white phosphorous, and killing of civilians carrying white flags; Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, which killed 167 Palestinians, “including at least 87 who did not take part in the hostilities, 32 of whom were minors;” Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when Israel killed 2250 Palestinians, two-thirds civilians, including 551 children, and injured 11,231, including 3,540 women and 3,436 children, mostly civilians, while in addition “118 UNRWA installations were damaged, including 83 schools and 10 health centres,” and “over 12,600 housing units were totally destroyed and almost 6,500 sustained severe damage,” while another 150,000 were rendered inhabitable, and 500,000 were internally displaced; Israel also massively attacked Gaza’s water and power infrastructure, with long-term consequences as the blockade made repairs almost impossible; the Great March of Return in 2018-19, when thousands of Palestinians daily rallied peacefully next to the Israel-Gaza fence and Israel’s response was to shoot to kill and maim, with 266 Palestinians massacred, including 50 children, while over 30,000 were wounded, including 3000 children, with special focus on the knees leading to a spike in amputations; 2021, which killed 261 people, including 67 children, wounded over 2,200, destroyed or damaged over 1770 housing units, while 290 water infrastructure “objects” were damaged, leading to “untreated sewage flowed into the streets, lakes, and sea.” And this is all in the context of the Israeli air-land-sea blockade of Gaza, the impact of which on Palestinians’ access to food, water, medical care and the ability to have any kind of economy has been widely documented, the UN describing Gaza under its impact as “unliveable.”
None of this suggests any “ceasefire” in the last 20 years before October 7. But once again, some may still find this too large a sweep to accept that the reality for Palestinians was anything but ceasefire. So, once again, let’s narrow the picture further, to just 2023.
Before October 7, 2023, 234 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of that year, and another none were killed by “settlers,” including 41 children. By the end of 2023, this figure had doubled to 507, including 81 children, making it “the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties in 2005.” This was up from 155 killed in 2022, already the highest figure since 2005. By August, the number of Palestinians injured with live ammunition in the West Bank stood at 683, more than double the 2012 figure of 307. There were an average of 95 monthly settler attacks on Palestinians in 2023, up from 71 in 2022.
Let’s look at some major cases of non-ceasefire from 2023.
On January 15, the IOF shot 14-year old Omar Khaled Lutfi Khmour in the head, killing him, in a pre-dawn raid on Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, the fourth child, and 14th Palestinian, to be killed already in the first two weeks of the year.
On January 26, the IOF invaded Jenin refugee camp, killing 10 Palestinians, including a 61-year old woman, and wounding another 20. Bottom of Form
An ambulance driver attempting to get to the wounded was shot at and prevented from approaching.
Ceasefire? Israeli forces raided the Jenin camp, January 2023 [Zain Jaafar/AFP]
On February 23, the IOF raided an apartment block in Nablus, killing 11 people, including a 72-year old, and wounding over one hundred civilians with gunshots, the IOF claiming to be hunting three resistance fighters. Video shows IOF killers shooting an unarmed man running away, and an Israeli military vehicle plowing into a crowd.
On March 16, the IOF killed 2 men and a 16-year old boy in Jenin by firing on their car; the three had been prisoners in occupation jails who were recently released, while another 14-year old boy who had been shot days earlier also died.
Ceasefire? Palestinian children inspect the rubble of their demolished school in Jib al-Dib.
On May 7, the IOF demolished the Palestinian primary school in Jib al-Dib, an “unrecognized village” near illegal Israeli “settlements” in Area C of the occupied West Bank. The school was attended by 40 children aged 6-10. Before the school was built, children in Jib al-Dib had to walk an hour each way to school. The school was constructed by the Palestinian Authority without the permission of the illegal occupation authorities, who reject around 99 percent of such requests in Area C. The EU, which had funded the project, condemned the demolition and said it was “appalled,” empty words Palestinians are used to hearing.
On May 9, the IOF attacked Gaza in a firefight with Palestinian resistance fighters; of the 33 killed, 13 were civilians, including “four girls, three boys, four women and two men,” according to the UN, while 6 were known to be fighters, the status of the remainder unconfirmed. Al Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights organisation, said the IOF had Israel “destroyed nearly 60 residential units, displacing almost 375 people, around a third of them children.” Israel also banned fuel for Gaza’s powerplant, forcing the closure of water treatment plants which caused 120,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater to be discharged into the sea, while medical facilities and schools were also damaged by the strikes.
On May 22, extreme right-wing Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem with dozens of Israeli settlers, guarded by Israeli cops, who also restricted entry to Palestinians. In early June Ben-Gvir called on illegal settlers to take over the territory and kill dozens, hundreds or thousands of Palestinians, as necessary.
On June 19, Israel again invaded the Jenin refugee camp, backed by air strikes from helicopter gunships for the first time in 20 years in the West Bank, killing 5 and injuring 91 Palestinians. Once again ambulances were attacked as they came to the rescue.
On July 3, the IDF again invaded the Jenin camp, with over 1,000 troops “backed up by Shin Bet intelligence agents, Magav border police, armed drones, helicopter gunships, armoured personnel carriers and armoured bulldozers,” killing 13 Palestinians and wounding over 100.
On August 4, these near-daily Israeli atrocities were becoming so blatant that even the US State Department used the terms “terror attack” and “violent extremism” to describe the murder of 19-year old Palestinian Qusai Jamal Maatan, near Ramallah, by settler fanatics who stormed his village.
According to the UN, “On 10 August, an Israeli undercover unit raided Nablus city, where an exchange of fire with Palestinians ensued, killing a 23-year-old Palestinian man. On 11 August, Israeli forces raided the Tulkarm Refugee Camp and shot and killed a 25-year-old Palestinian. At least three others were also injured, including two by live ammunition. According to a human rights organization, the man killed was not involved in the exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Palestinians. On 15 August, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians including one 16-year-old child, during a search-and-arrest operation in Aqabet Jaber Camp Refugee Camp (Jericho).”
In the same report, the UN reported that “on 21 August, Palestinians demonstrated along Israel’s perimeter fence marking the 54th anniversary of burning Al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinians burnt tires and threw stones and explosive devices towards the Israeli fence. Israeli forces shot live ammunition, rubber bullets and teargas canisters, injuring 19 Palestinians, including 12 children.”
On September 24, two Palestinians were killed when the IOF attacked Nour Shams Refugee Camp near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.
And so on. These are just the killings – it would be difficult to document all the land seizures, destruction of housing and infrastructure, arbitrary arrests, home raids, endless harassment at checkpoints that have all been part of Palestinians’ daily lives for decades but which have increased sharply in 2023. In August 2023, the Norwegian Refugee Council produced a report on the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land which stated that “entire Palestinian communities [are] being wiped off the map.”
Obviously, none of this sounds much like “ceasefire.” And if even this picture of the whole of 2023 is still not convincing, let’s return to the beginning, to October 6:
“HUWARA, West Bank, Oct 6 (Reuters) – A Jewish settler killed a 19-year-old Palestinian during a settler attack on the occupied West Bank town of Huwara on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Residents said a group of settlers had erected a tent in Huwara, held prayers and later marched through the town. Some of them were carrying arms and began vandalising shops and cars, they said. One of the settlers shot university student Labib Dumaidi, who later died of his wounds in hospital, the residents said.”
Obviously, both armed and civil resistance are justified against violent occupation, and when the occupier is killing you every day to facilitate ongoing land theft, you have every right to fire back. Far from October 7 breaking a “ceasefire,” it is clear from this brief summary that it was merely a continuation.
One might say that the right to armed resistance against a brutal, murderous occupation regime does not justify the likewise brutal large-scale slaughter of Israeli civilians as occurred on October 7, and most would agree [and it is a secondary question whether that was the intent of the al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, which goes against the evidence I am aware of, or rather was an unintended consequence as hundreds of brutalised-from-birth Palestinians broke out of the cage they were locked in all their lives and turned brutaliser]. But if we agree that civilians should not be killed in military operations, surely that applies over 20 times as much to the Israeli occupation regime for the two decades (at least) prior to October 7, given the data above? And given that Israel’s so-called “response” has killed 40-50 times as many Palestinians since October as Israelis who were killed on that day, let alone the deliberate destruction of everything necessary for human life in Gaza and Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation, then it should also apply dozens of times more to Israel?
October 7 was not the end of a ceasefire, it was a continuation of decades of anything other.
It is well-known that Israel’s Gaza genocide is principally enabled by the constant supply of tens of billions of dollars of killing equipment by the United States, making it the principle accomplice in the genocide, with Germany coming in a close second.
An important secondary question, however, is that of who continues to supply most of the state’s oil and coal (Israel has its own Mediterranean gas supplies) that keep the Israeli economy and war machine running. It may surprise some that the main culprits have been publicly critical of Israel’s actions, including BRICS members Russia, Brazil, Egypt and China, as well as some who have condemned Israel most furiously, such as BRICS member South Africa and, indirectly, Turkey.
According to S&P Global in late October 2023:
“With almost no domestic crude or condensate production, Israel has been importing around 300,000 b/d of crude this year to process at its two refineries in Haifa and Ashdod. Israel’s biggest source of oil is the Kazakh-sourced CPC Blend crude exported via Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk and Azeri Light which is shipped from Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Together they accounted for over half of Israel’s crude imports this year” [emphasis added].
Map showing the routes of the BTC pipeline (red), through which Azeri oil reaches Israel via the Turkish port of Ceyhan, and the CPC pipeline (green), through which Kazak and Russian oil reaches Israel via the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk
It is worth breaking this down a little more. First, even with regards to fuel, the US is also a supplier, mainly of refined JP-8 Jet Fuel for Israel’s killer jets, as part of US military aid to Israel; three tankers of jet fuel have arrived since October. Before the war, the only other form of refined fuel Israel imported was from BRICS member and rabid Israel-ally India, which supplied diesel, but this has fallen off, not due to good intentions, but rather due to the Red Sea blockade by AnsarAllah authorities in north Yemen. Regarding India, it is worth adding that an Indian-Israeli joint-venture has been producing Hermes 900 UAV attack drones and providing them to Israel; India has also been providing large numbers of rockets and explosives to Israel. Indian leader Modi is, of course, a close ally of his “dear friend” Vladimir Putin as he described him in his recent trip to Moscow.
Besides refined fuel, “Israel’s military requires significant quantities of diesel and gasoline for tanks and other military vehicles” which “is supplied by Israel’s refineries” in Ashdod and Haifa, which rely on imported crude oil. This is where Azeri, Russian-Kazak, Brazilian and Egyptian crude comes in, alongside growing supplies from Gabon/Nigeria.
Azerbaijan has been a major supplier of oil to Israel for many years, as part of a two-way arrangement in which Israel supplies Azerbaijan with guns. The basis of this cozy arrangement is Azerbaijan’s fraught relationship with neighbouring Iran; Azerbaijan’s three-decade autocrat Aliev runs a secular dictatorship, but as Azerbaijanis are largely Shiite, he fears the influence of Iran’s fundamentalist Shiism; while Iran itself includes a very large Azeri minority, and Iran in turn fears Azerbaijan’s potential influence there. Though this has not prevented some growing Iran-Azerbaijan cooperation, particularly on the International North-South Transport Corridor running from Russia, via Azerbaijan into Iran and out into the Indian Ocean to the Indian city Mumbai, nevertheless this arms for oil Israel-Azerbaijan arrangement has stood the test of time.
Israeli arms played a decisive role in facilitating Azerbaijan’s reconquest of the Armenian-populated Ngorno-Karabakh region in 2023, which led to the flight of 90 percent of the population.
The problem is that for landlocked Azerbaijan to get its oil to the Mediterranean Sea, it must go through Turkey via the BTC (Baku-Tsibilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline; while long ago a reliable ally of Israel under the Kemalist military, Erdogan’s Islamist AKP regime turned markedly anti-Israel and pro-Palestine since coming to power in 2003. But this did not prevent long-established, large-scale Turkish-Israeli trade from flourishing, indeed Turkey had been Israel’s fifth largest trading partner; and above all Azerbaijani oil has continued to flow through Turkey to Israel.
Erdogan’s regime finally put its money where its mouth is in May 2024, cutting off all Turkish trade with Israel. However, given the international agreements involved with Azeri oil and the BTC pipeline (BP is the major shareholder along with Equinor, Eni, Total, Exxon and the Azeri oil company, while the Turkish oil company TPAO only holds a 6.5 percent stake), Turkey would find it very difficult to prevent Azeri oil going through to Israel, without forcing a legal showdown and by all accounts this oil continues to flow to Israel.
As such, while Erdogan tells a gigantic state-organised march that Hamas is a “national liberation movement”, calls for a genocide trial for Netanyahu and claims there is “no difference between Netanyahu and Hitler,” while Turkey was the first country to formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and while finally ending trade relations, Azeri oil traversing Turkey still accounts for some 40 percent of Israel’s crude imports.
Kazakhistan, Russia and the CPC pipeline
The other major source of Israel’s crude imports has been from Kazakhistan, which, like Azerbaijan, is landlocked; in this case Russia takes the place of Turkey, with Kazakh oil entering the Black Sea at Russia’s port of Novorossiysk via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). Israel also exports drones, precision rockets, radar systems and communications equipment to Kazakhistan, as well as the spyware technology of the NSO Group, with which the autocratic Kazakh regime infects the phones of dissidents. Kazakhistan is a close Russian ally and a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
Notably, in contrast to Turkey, Russia is not merely a transit territory but the major investor and minor supplier itself. Some 44 percent of CPC shares are owned by Russian companies, above all the state-controlled, joint-stock company Transneft, the largest oil company in the world which alone owns a quarter of CPC, alongside Lukoil (12.5 percent) and Rosneft (7.5 percent); other shareholders include Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Eni and Kazakh oil companies (20 percent). Likewise, “CPC oil is a blend made up of oil from major fields in and around both the Kazakh and the Russian sections of the Caspian Sea, as well as smaller onshore fields in southern Russia. The majority is Kazakh, and cargoes are given either a Kazakh or a Russian certificate of origin in overall proportion to the amounts of oil that are shipped through the system from each country.”
As we see in the chart above, in July-September 2023, CPC supplied some 40 percent of Israel’s oil imports; while it has fluctuated since, in January 2024 it still accounted for some 40 percent of the total. The data shows that at least 600kt of Kazakh/Russian crude has been shipped to Israel since October via the CPC. This later chart based on data from Oil Change International, shows this has continued through 2024, the CPC supplying some 40 percent of Israel’s oil in March and 100 percent in June:
Despite Russia’s verbal criticism of Israel’s actions, the only unlikely danger to the CPC supply would be not Russian government policy but western sanctions on Russia over Ukraine (sanctions which Israel does not take part in), but “the importance of Caspian Sea oil and gas to US firms ExxonMobil and Chevron — and the lack of viable alternative export routes — has so far saved the CPC system from Western sanctions, and there is no reason to suspect that this will change in the near future.”
In addition, Russia also exports ‘dirty’ petroleum products to Israel, notably VGO fuel oil, which is upgraded into jet fuel (!) and diesel, and “this flow does not seem to have been affected by recent events, with four cargoes having reportedly arrived since 13 October 2023,” carrying 120 kt. Russian VGO has been impacted by EU sanctions, probably making the Israeli market for VGO even more important today.
Russia and the US have also been the main suppliers of processed oil products to Israel over the last year, on some months Russia ahead of the US, though both were surpassed by BRICS member Brazil in April:
Finally, Russia is also an important supplier of coal to Israel, exporting 247,500 mt to Israel in the first half of 2014, second only to Colombia, which in June banned coal exports; more on this below.
Interestingly, both Turkish and Russian trade with Israel was jointly highlighted on June 9 when the Turkish cargo vessel Yaf Horizon caught on fire in Haifa harbour. It was somewhat embarrassing because this was after Turkey’s trade ban, indicating that some Turkish companies have attempted to get around the ban (indeed some circumvent it by re-routing through Greece, which is currently strongly allied to Israel on an anti-Turkey platform). The vessel had first docked at Russia’s Novorossiysk port, where it picked up Russian iron or steel for export to Israel.
Where does Israel-Russia collaboration stand at present?
Of course, there ought to be nothing surprising about Russia supplying, and facilitating the supply of, oil to Israel, given the long-term close relationship between the two countries. During Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ Gaza blitzkrieg in 2014, which killed 2500 Palestinians, Putin declared “I support the struggle of Israel,” while Israel refused to join its western allies in condemning the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, abstaining in the UN and rejecting sanctions.
It was hardly surprising that Netanyahu’s equally ultra-rightist successor, and former ally, then prime minister Naftali Bennett, was the first ‘world leader’ to make a high level visit to Moscow to meet Putin after his invasion of Ukraine. Bennett’s first statement following Russia’s invasion merely affirmed Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but made no mention of Russia. Following US pressure, foreign minister and ‘moderate’ Zionist Yair Lapid issued the official, half-hearted condemnation. Bennett then issued a demand that his ministers say nothing; rejected Ukraine’s calls for arms, blocked any attempt by third parties to send Israeli-made arms to Ukraine, and blocked the US from providing Israeli ‘iron dome’ missile shield technology to Ukraine. Despite two and a half years of pressure from Israel’s main ally, the US, Israel has still not sent a gun to Ukraine. Even in January 2024, Israel rejected US requests for it to supply some very old (supplied to Israel in the 1960s) anti-aircraft weaponry to the US for it to give to Ukraine. Not long before October 7, Russia announced the opening of its consular offices in West Jerusalem, which it had recognised as Israel’s capital several years earlier, despite that city’s illegal incorporation of East Jerusalem.
Following the onset of the Gaza genocide in October 2023 however, these powerful Russian-Israeli relations began to fray. The above demonstrates that this was not because of any problem with Israel as such, but rather was related to Russian-American rivalry. For nearly two years, the US, for its own imperial reasons, had led support for Ukraine’s legitimate struggle for self-determination against Russia’s illegal and barbaric war of aggression. Now it was Russia’s chance to turn the tables, criticising the US for its 100 percent support for Israel’s absolutely apocalyptic actions, showcasing Russia’s more “balanced” view of the Mideast crisis, blaming the US for not having brought about the ‘two-state solution’. While Putin’s target is the US rather than Israel as such, this discourse by definition means criticism of Israel, resulting in damage to Israeli-Russian relations.
While much analysis suggests this is due to the growing relationship between Russia and Iran (eg with Iranian provision of killer-drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine), in reality Russia (and China) merely place themselves in the exact ‘Arab mainstream’ on these issues alongside their BRICS allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE etc – recognition of Israel, calls for ‘two-state solution’, supporting UN ceasefire resolutions, condemnation of the October 7 attack as an “absolutely unacceptable terrorist attack against Israel,” demanding the unconditional release of all Israeli hostages, strong support for the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, refusal to join South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel and so on. Russia’s mild change of stance has not led to even one Israeli warplane being shot down by Russian-controlled air defence while attacking pro-Iran targets in Syria. Meanwhile, in contrast to the active Israel-Lebanon border, the Syria-Israel Golan demarcation line “remains conspicuously calm,” the Syrian regime having instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” To keep it that way, Russia has beefed up its forces along the Golan occupation line to ensure no stray Palestinian or Iran-backed forces cause any trouble.
Of course, the shallowness of Russia’s public criticism of Israel can be gleaned from some of the more serious Russian commentary, such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s December 28 interview, in which he directly compared Russia’s and Israel’s campaigns in Ukraine and Gaza by using Russia’s Orwellian terms to describe its own invasion: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Hamas must be destroyed as a whole and as a military force. It sounds like demilitarisation. He also said that extremism must be eliminated in Gaza. It sounds like denazification.” He then went on to commend Netanyahu for not criticising Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In this light, Russia’s provision and facilitation of a major part of Israel’s oil and coal supplies should not be any surprise, but in case anyone were taken in by its newly critical position towards Israel, these material facts are a reminder of reality.
Iraq, Egypt and Brazil
Until April 2023, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government was also an important oil exporter to Israel, again traversing Turkish territory to Ceyhan, but a legal dispute between the KRG and the Iraqi government halted this flow. The main sources making up for this loss have been Gabon and Nigeria, Brazil and Egypt.
BRICS member Brazil is another important supplier of crude to Israel, with two shipments totalling 260 kilotonnes delivered to Israel in December 2023, and February 2024. This crude was supplied from oil fields owned by Shell, TotalEnergies and Brazil’s Petrobras. This is despite the Lula government’s sharp criticism of Israeli actions, leading to the withdrawal of Brazil’s ambassador to Israel in late May and expression of support to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), at one point Lula even calling the Israeli military campaign ‘genocide’.
Finally, Israel imports a small but regular amount of oil from its BRICS neighbour Egypt, via Sidi Kerir, near Alexandria, the terminus of the SUMED pipeline. Oil from BRICS members United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as Iraq, also feeds into this pipeline. Many might say, this is no surprise, Egypt being the first Arab state to recognise Israel, the irony being that many ‘anti-imperialist’ critics believe BRICS to be the answer to US imperialism – yet BRICS members Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia, like Egypt, all have long-term relations with Israel; only Saudi Arabia and Iran do not. Words are good, but oil profits are another thing.
Of course, it is certainly true that the al-Sisi dictatorship has collaborated with the Israeli blockade of Gaza for years, and now blocks Palestinians fleeing from Gaza not to prevent the new Nakbah, but because the regime hates Palestinians as much as Israel does. But alarmed by the impact Israel’s genocide on its borders was having on its own population, Egypt announced in May it was formally joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ, alongside Turkey and Colombia. But of course, like the others, Egypt still draws the line at actually taking any concrete action.
Coal: Russia, China, South Africa to the rescue
On June 8, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro announced that his country would suspend coal exports to Israel – Colombia had on average supplied about 50-60 percent of Israel’s coal. Israel had imported 1.4 million metric tons (mt) of thermal coal in 2024 to date, of which Colombia supplied 855,700 mt, or 60 percent of Israel’s coal imports.
But according to S&P Global Global Commodities at Sea data, Russia was next, exporting 247,500 mt to Israel in that period, fellow BRICS member South Africa next at 169,200 mt, then the US at 86,100 mt and BRICS member China with 53,000 mt. LSEG Data and Analytics shows slightly different but similarly revealing data, showing that Russia had exported nearly double that amount, some 512,000 mt, to Israel since October 7, South Africa 496,000 mt, while not revealing any Chinese coal exports:
This data from LSEG Data and Analytics, showing coal shipments to Israel in 2024, reveals the large role of Russian coal in sustaining Israel’s regime; unfortunately seems to show that Colombia’s boycott has not been put into practice as of July; does not show Chinese shipments as claimed by S&P Global, Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rKdD_nWe5o4YQ3YYXUGkSsXQT4JO0DQ5cAxJ5OYyzeU/edit
As discussed above, there is nothing out of the ordinary in Russia’s case, but an intriguing incident may cast some light on what more may be happening below the surface. On June 12, the Houthis launched a small watercraft, drone and missile attack on the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged vessel M.V Tutor, sinking it. The Tutor was, or had been, carrying 80,000 mt of Russian coal, loaded at Ust-Luga, near Saint Petersburg; it was on its way to India after traversing the Suez Canal. While the Houthis have not exactly been precise in their choice of attacks – they claim to only attack vessels trading with Israel, yet hits have included ships carrying grain to their ally, Iran, twice, and a Chinese ship carrying Russian oil to India – it is likely that even such hits are based on erroneous assumptions. What may have caused an attack on such a large shipment of Russian coal?
On this, Patrick Bond from the University of Johannesburg speculates that “This may be because MV Tutor had apparently stopped at Jordan’s Aqaba New Port, where it seems that coal can be quickly unloaded and transported, either up the Jordanian highway seven hours distant to cement factories where it serves as a fuel, OR perhaps across the nearby Israeli border at the Rabin Crossing, from where around four hours away by truck, the coal can be sent to storage depots next to the Rutenberg coal-fired power plant, which normally served by ships unloading directly at Ashdod. Next door, Ashkelon’s port has been closed because it’s just 4km from Jabalia in Gaza.”
South Africa, however, was widely commended for its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, but till now has also had extensive trade relations with Israel, exporting $350.9 million to Israel in 2022, of which 40 percent was coal, and as shown below, nearly 500,000 mt of coal since October:
To date there are no indications of steps being taken to end these coal supplies to Israel, and with the new governing coalition between the ANC and the pro-Zionist Democratic Alliance, this seems even less likely to change. This urgent appeal to South Africa to halt all coal exports to Israel issued by the Global Energy Embargo Coalitionprovides a great deal more information on this trading relationship with South Africa and Israel.
Thus despite its ICJ case, for South Africa, along with fellow applicants Egypt and Turkey (led by alleged anti-Israel zealot Erdogan), and more lukewarm critics of Israel’s current actions in Russia, China and Brazil (and of course pro-Israel India), the logic of capitalist commerce and profit-making speaks much louder than words – it is BRICS, after all, that we’re talking about.
US the primary facilitator of genocide, but what of BDS?
Of course, none of the above reduces the absolutely central role of US imperialism in the arming of Israel with billions of dollars worth of weaponry as genocide unfolds, indeed without the continual re-supply of ammunition and a vast array of weaponry the Zionist regime would have had to stop by now. The US supplies $3.8 billion dollars in weaponry to Israel every year, but since the Gaza war began vastly greater quantities of tank and artillery ammunition, bombs, rockets, and small arms have been sent. In February, the Senate approved another $14.5 billion in weaponry to Israel, then in April, Congress approved a further $26 billion in general aid to Israel, and in June Congress approved another $18 billion arms transfer to Israel to purchase dozens of Boeing Co. F-15 aircraft. Meanwhile, in March it was revealed that the US had sent over 100 “secret” weapons shipments to Israel, consisting of “precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms (like firearms), and more,” which it could get away with as they fell just below the dollar value that requires Congressional approval. The head spins as all this US-supplied weaponry is used to slaughter tens of thousands of people and make Gaza unliveable by destroying everything necessary for human life.
The US, in other words, is as much involved in the genocide as Israel itself is; in the same way as it is Russia that is responsible for destroying Ukraine and for the Assad regime’s destruction of Syria, or again the US that was responsible for destroying Iraq, and so on.
That said, the Israeli economy is in crisis as a result of the war, and enormous pressure for it to stop could be exerted if major economies ended their trade relations with Israel, especially the trade that fuels its economy and war machine. Throughout much of the world, supporters of Palestine have pushed the campaign for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel, not just because of the current apocalypse, but against the apartheid regime and the illegal occupation more generally. How ironic that among these western pro-Palestine activists are some who push illusions in rival imperialisms such as Russia and China or who see BRICS more generally as some kind of alternative to US imperialism, yet all these states continue to supply oil and coal, as well as an array of other products, to the regime as it commits genocide, alongside major western oil companies involved in the CPC and BTC like BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni and TotalEnergies. If they all ended this trade, it could make a significant difference.
The fact that they have not, and show no signs of it, further accentuates the point that there are no geopolitical ‘camps’, ‘blocs’ or ‘axes’, as mainstream media and popular geopolitics writers, on both the right and left, are so fond of. Rather, all we have is global capitalism, the pigsty of global profit-making, where at times, all may be against all in their rivalry, with no relevance of any imaginary ‘camps’, and at other times, all are in it together.
Indeed, due to this original sin, the Palestinians have no right to ever demand a return to this original partition or one closer to 50/50 (if the preferable one-state solution continues to evade them).
Logical right? Why don’t we try some other examples?
Russia has conquered and annexed about 20% of Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Ukraine does not agree and fights back, just like the Palestinians in 1948 rejected losing more than half of their country. So therefore, due to Ukraine’s rudeness in not accepting that might equals right, now Russia should annex 50% of Ukraine, and it will be Ukraine’s own fault.
In 1974, Turkey conquered 38% of Cyprus (ethnic Turkish Cypriots were 18% of the population, scattered throughout the island), and later declared this a ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Cyprus rejected this partition and continues to, so therefore Turkey has the right to annex about 60% of Cyprus as punishment for this affront.
After centuries of colonialism, Britain partitioned Ireland in 1922, generously allowing the Irish to have a full 5/6ths of their country, only keeping one sixth for the Empire. The Republic of Ireland never accepted this and in the 1960s through 1990s the nationalist population in the north fought to end the partition. Therefore, Britain certainly has the right to now conquer at least one third of Ireland as recompense for this rejection of British goodwill.
And if that is the correct punishment for merely rejecting the violent partition of one’s homeland, surely this principle should apply double or triple when a country outright invades or takes over another country? Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, so therefore Iran is surely entitled to about half of Iraq’s territory as compensation, right? France occupied Algeria, Italy occupied Libya and so on, therefore Algeria is entitled to half of France, and Libya is entitled to half of Italy, and so on and so forth, though we start getting confused about which side is the one that should get the compensation, maybe Algeria should be punished for rejecting the humane offer of French rule by having to pay France for independence; hang on, that’s exactly what happened to the people of Haiti after all.
Of course there is no point continuing with this absurdity; so why is it so commonly accepted that only the first case is not absurd?
The data and timeline are well-known. By 1947, about one third of the population of Palestine consisted of Jews, overwhelmingly those who had immigrated as part of the Zionist program in recent decades (but including a small number of Indigenous Jews), while two-thirds were Palestinian Arabs. What is wrong with a partition being imposed on the Indigenous Palestinians by foreign imperialist and other powers? One can easily think of three objections:
1.It was not the decision of the people who lived there; the principle of self-determination says that massive life-changing ‘solutions’ should not be imposed on people by outside powerful states;
2. It is normal for people to reject having their own country partitioned, no matter what the percentages, above all because the Palestinian people lived scattered all over Palestine, so a large part of their population would find themselves either ethnically cleansed or living under the rule of the proposed ‘Jewish state’; for the same reasons, partition was an unacceptable solution in countries like Cyprus and Bosnia, where the populations (Greek and Turkish Cypriots; Bosnian Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks [Muslims] and ‘Yugoslavs’ [mixed Bosnians]) lived scattered all over those lands.
3. Even if they had accepted the (bad) principle of partition, why would the Palestinians accept such an unfair partition, in which the one third Jewish population were awarded 56% of the land and the two thirds Palestinian population only 43% (with one percent the city of Jerusalem)? In which Palestinians would have been a majority of the population even in the ‘Jewish state’, ie a state they would have no rights in (much the same situation likewise existed for Greek Cypriots in the ‘Turkish’ Republic of Northern Cyprus and Bosnian Muslims in the ‘Serb’ Republic in Bosnia).
What is not widely known is that in 1946 the Arab governments had proposed an alternative plan to partition: a united democratic state where “all citizens would be represented in the guarantee of civil and political rights” where Jews would have a “permanent and secure position in the country with full participation in its political life on a footing of absolute equality with the Arabs.” The Zionist movement and its imperialist and Soviet backers rejected this in favour of a brutal and unequal partition, yet it is the Palestinians that should be punished by losing even more land.
The Nakbah that Israel launched following (and preceding) the Palestinian rejection of partition of their land involved massive ethnic cleansing, a string of some 70 horrific massacres and and the destruction of 530 towns and villages, killing 15,000 Palestinians; the 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed were never allowed to return, despite UN Resolution 194 of 1948 which demands it; they and their descendants now number nearly 10 times that figure.
In response to the Nakbah, a number of semi-feudal Arab states made a weak attempt to protect the ‘Arab state’ by sending in troops; the Zionist assertions that the Nakbah was ‘in response’ to this ‘Arab invasion’ are belied by simply chronology: take the most well-known event in the Nakbah, the Zionist massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem (in which estimates from 107 to 254 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered) as a key example; the date was April 9, 1948; the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, and only after that did the Arab armies enter to the UN-assigned ‘Arab state’. That is when Israel conquered half of that ‘Arab state’ and expanded its rule to 78 percent of Palestine (while of the remaining 22 percent, the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – went under Jordanian control and Gaza under Egyptian control, both conquered by Israel in 1967).
While the only logical solution is a democratic state for all who live there, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Israelis, Palestinians, one person one vote, together with right of return of Palestinian refugees, the PLO program since 1948, it is the ‘two-state’ solution, whereby Israel keeps its 78% and a state of Palestine is established on the 22% ‘occupied territories’, that has international support (except the US and Israel). Since there are around 7.1 million Israeli Jews and 7.4 million Palestinians now living between the river and the sea (not including the Palestinian refugees), this ‘two-state solution’ is manifestly unjust, yet despite this it is Israel that has always rejected it, and the Palestinian leadership which has accepted it (if combined with return of refugees to the 78% ‘Israel’ with equal rights there) since the late 1970s (as I have documented here).
But in reality, given the roughly equal population numbers, if there were to be a two-state rather than one-state solution (if the latter is impossible to achieve in the short-term), surely a roughly 50/50 split – something closer to the 1947 plan but improved – would be manifestly fairer. Yet the completely just and logical Palestinian rejection of partition in 1947 is today cited as a Palestinian ‘original sin’ that can never be returned to as Israel naturally had the ‘right’ to violate UN Resolution 181 by seizing 78% of Palestine with gruesome violence and terrorism. Think about – where is the logic?
Israel “withdrew” from 6% of internationally-recognised Palestine, or 1.2% of historic Palestine; so small it is hard to see on a map, yet are expected to not resist the occupation of the rest of their country?
There are a number of problems with this. The first is widely noted by pro-Palestine advocates: that Israeli “withdrawal” was accompanied by placing Gaza under a land, sea and air blockade which prevented most goods and people form getting in or out, while Israel regularly bombed the territory, every few years in major near-genocidal operations, bombed its water and power plants, left the people undernourished and with access to only unclean water, shot at Palestinian fishing boats and so on; when a country has no control over its borders because it is blockaded by its “former” occupier, it remains occupied according to international law, not to mention common sense. And of course the devastating impacts of this blockade have been widely reported, with the United Nations reporting that Gaza was “unliveable” – imagine, that is before this current holocaust.
But there is a more fundamental reason why this is a stupid argument: Gaza is not a nation, or country or state. The nation is Palestine; the state, as recognised by the UN General Assembly and the vast majority of nations on Earth since the 1970s, covers the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967, namely West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem, one fifth of historic Palestine (for argument’s sake let’s leave aside for now the definition of Palestine as, well, all of Palestine, and the fact that 75 percent of ‘Gazans’ are actually refugees ethnically cleansed from ‘Israel’).
Now, the West Bank is 5655 square kilometres; Gaza is 365 square kilometres, meaning the internationally recognised state of Palestine is 6020 square kilometres; Gaza is therefore only around 6 percent of the Palestinian state (even though there are almost 3 million living in the West Bank and 2.3 million squeezed into Gaza). Again, let’s leave aside for now that since Israel itself is 22,770 square kilometres, Gaza is therefore only 1.2 percent of historic Palestine.
In other words, even if we leave aside the blockade and accept the Zionist premise that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it therefore “withdrew” from only 6 percent of the occupied state of Palestine (or 1.2 percent of historic Palestine). So, what would we expect a people to do when the colonial occupier leaves only 6 percent of their country? Would they just say, OK, sweet, let’s just get on with it, or would they use this space to continue to resist the ongoing occupation of the rest of their country?
Let’s imagine – in the 1950s, France had withdrawn from the town of Oran on the north Algerian coastline, and a tiny area around it, but maintained its occupation of 94 percent of Algeria. So, would the Algerians in Oran set up an independent ‘Republic of Oran’ and say stuff the rest of Algeria? Or would it have been a base for the independence struggle of the rest of Algeria? The answer is obvious. The idea that the allegedly ‘free’ Gazans would have just sat pretty while Israel continued to occupy, colonise, steal land and murder in the West Bank and Jerusalem is absurd, and offensive.
Israel “withdrew” from Gaza, if we ignore the blockade that made life unliveable, it did not withdraw from Palestine.
Take Ukraine. Russia is currently occupying around 20 percent of Ukraine. That means it is not occupying 80 percent of Ukraine. Putin expects Ukraine to just cop that, to sign a peace treaty allowing Russia to annex 20 percent of its land. Most people see that as self-evidently absurd and unjust. So Ukraine continues to resist. Why is it considered normal for Ukraine, 80 percent of which is unoccupied, to continue to resist Russian occupation of the 20 percent, but it is not considered normal for Palestine, in the 6 percent that was theoretically ‘unoccupied’, to continue to resist Israeli occupation of the 94 percent of Palestine?
There is actually a third thing wrong with the statement, since it implies that Hamas simply “fired rockets” willy nilly at Israel as if Israel was doing nothing wrong; and for argument’s sake, let’s leave aside both the blockade, and the continuing occupation 94 percent of the Palestinian state, both of which mean Palestinians in Gaza have the internationally recognised right to armed resistance. What it ignores is that after “withdrawal,” Israel continued to bomb Gaza whenever it felt like it. Now, it might be a standard Zionist argument, repeated inevitably in western media, that Israel only launched such bombs “in response” to Hamas rockets, leaving aside the fact that these Israeli bombings always killed far greater numbers of Palestinian civilians than the little home-made Hamas ‘rockets’ did Israelis (they mostly killed no-one). But anyone who believes that is simply a starry-eyed victim of propaganda. Do the research – just as often it was the other way around – Israel launches some targeted assassination and kills a dozen civilian “collateral” victims, Hamas responds with rockets.
Or, reflecting the unity of all of Palestine as noted above, Israel carries out some atrocity in the West Bank, or for example invades the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, so Hamas exercises its right to resist by launching some rockets from Gaza. Were these rockets effective, or always a good idea – perhaps not, tactics can be discussed, but when you live in a sealed-off prison you have few other options – but the idea that it was mostly Israel “responding” rather than the other way around is bald fiction.
Their Anti-imperialism and Ours 
