M. Reza Behnam
An American president, a convicted felon, welcomed, for the third time this year, an indicted Israeli war criminal to the White House; further sullying what remains of America’s standing in the world.
Previous meetings between U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers, like the recent one, have resulted in added repression for the Palestinians, greater instability in the Middle East and a chipping away at the foundation of international order forged over the last 80 years.
Much has changed, markedly for the worse, since American officials, diplomats and military experts recognized the dangers that lie ahead if the United States recognized and pursued a foreign policy aligned with the Jewish state after World War II.
For example, General George C. Marshall, who served in the Truman administration as Secretary of State (1947-49) and Secretary of Defense (1950-51), and foreign policy advisors in the State Department, strongly opposed U.S. support for a Jewish state. They feared recognition would alienate Arab nations, jeopardize access to energy resources, and lead to potential military involvement in the future.
Also, following Israel’s preemptive war in 1967 against its Arab neighbors (Egypt, Syria and Jordan), former Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1949-53) the man who played a pivotal role in shaping foreign policy during the Cold War, observed: “It was a mistake to even create the State of Israel.”
Yet another significant American, the country’s first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, noted in 1948, that ours has become “a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.” He also cautioned, “To ignore the danger of aggression is simply to invite it.”
The unstable future these men foresaw is now:
1) Israel has been engaged in a war to exterminate Palestinians and Palestinian national identity;
2) the U.S. and Israel, two nuclear-armed nations, have waged an unprovoked war on Iran, a non-nuclear nation;
3) Israel has become a massive military power and threat to the entire region, with expansionist wars against Lebanon and Syria;
4) It has acted as a rogue state, dismissing U.N. resolutions, ignoring international court rulings, and violating international laws and norms.
Israel has never been at home in the Middle East. Although geographically located in the region, it sees itself as an expressly European nation, superior to its Arab neighbors. Europe helped birth the Zionist colonial project and has provided legitimacy for its continuous expansionism.
To legitimize its presence, Tel Aviv has wielded the Bible to make it seem other than what it truly is—a European colonial settlement imposed through endless violence and a Western fortress in the heart of the Arab world.
As currently constituted—an apartheid settler-colonial entity—Israel has no legitimate right to exist. The International Court of Justice said as much. On 19 July 2024, it ruled Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip illegal under international law and that it must end.
The ongoing Zionist project in Palestine has devastated the Middle East. Tens of millions have perished, generations of Arab lives have been destroyed and postponed, and their lands have been ravaged by U.S.-Israel wars.
How can such an aberrant dangerous entity be integrated into the region? For over seven decades, the United States has essentially made a pretense of trying.
After the 1967 Arab-Israel War, for example, Washington brokered one-sided futile peace accords: Camp David, 1978 and Oslo, 1993 and 1995. It also brokered the Abraham Accords in 2020 between Israel and Arab dictators willing to ignore Zionist brutalities and the dismemberment of the Palestinian nation.
The first to sign, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have had long-standing economic and military ties with Tel Aviv. Additionally, Arab despots who have accepted their countries’ submissive role in the region have been rewarded with U.S. military weapons and technology. The United States has, however, ensured that Israel retain its “qualitative military edge” in the region by requiring that its proxy have access to the most advanced military weaponry.
While feigning peace, a regional imbalance of power favorable to Israel has been created. Any obstacle—country or freedom movement—that stands in its way is regarded as the enemy, including the United Nations and its affiliated agencies.
If they succeed, lawlessness among nations may prevail. The victors of World War II understood the importance of establishing the principle that individuals are responsible for their actions and that they must, under international law, be held accountable. To that end, they set up international military tribunals—Nuremberg (1945-46) and Tokyo Trials (1946-48)—to pass judgment on members of the political, military and economic leadership of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
The allies also recognized that monetary liability was a necessity. Consequently, in 1951, the German government committed to paying “moral and material indemnity” for the “unspeakable crimes…committed in the name of the German people.” By 2023, it had made over $90 billion in payments to Holocaust survivors globally.
In recent years, with the end of white minority rule in South Africa in 1994 and under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to investigate the brutalities and crimes of the apartheid era.
If Israel’s maniacal regime goes unpunished, if there is no Nuremberg-like trial for them, the global community can bid farewell to the United Nations, international law and order.
No amount of material compensation can address the historical injustices that have been inflicted on the Palestinians. The prolonged loss and harm they have been subjected to cannot be satisfied by the so-called two-state solution.
It is beyond the pale to ask people who have been through hell to live side-by-side with their executioners. Accordingly, reparations warrant and justice demands that Palestine be returned to the Palestinians.
Zionist enforced and American assisted rules-based order has been a nightmare for the Palestinians. International order was compromised to create Israel. It is compromised to maintain it and will be compromised tomorrow until the historical injustice is finally put right.
*Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia.
Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/11/israel-in-palestine-and-the-collapse-of-international-order/
