Israel's Strategy and America's Mythology
by Ira Chernus
Israeli Air Force bombing in Gaza this week. (photo: flickr / cc / Basel Yazouri)Bombs
are falling and people are dying in Gaza. It's headline news in
America's mass media. As usual, though, we get only today's events, with
no historical context to explain what's really going on and why.The crucial piece of history our mass media ignore is that one basic principle has always guided Israel's foreign policy: Keep the perceived enemies divided; never let them unite.
That's why Israel aided the creation of Hamas in the 1980s. The Israeli government feared the prospect of all Palestinians uniting under the flag of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, dominated by Yassir Arafat's Fatah party. Hamas seemed to offer a counterweight.
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