Editor’s Note: This investigation was previously published by MintPress News, a crusading independent media outlet well worth your time and consideration, to which I regularly contribute. It is reproduced here with kind permission.
Ever since Tel Aviv’s 1948 creation, much has been said and written about ‘Greater Israel’ - the notion Zionism’s ultimate end goal is the forcible annexation and ethnic cleansing of vast swaths of Arab and Muslim lands for Jewish settlement, based on Biblical claims this territory was promised to Jews by God. The mainstream media typically dismisses this concept as antisemitic conspiracy theory, or at most the fringe fantasy of a minuscule handful of extremist Israelis.
In reality, as The Guardian admitted in 2009, the idea of a Greater Israel has long-appealed to “religious and secular right-wing nationalists” alike at a state and public level in Tel Aviv. They have the shared objective of “[seeking] to fulfill divine commandments about the ‘beginning of redemption’, as well as create ‘facts on the ground’ to enhance Israel’s security.” The outlet acknowledged this motivation was a key contemporary driving force in mainstream Zionist entity politics, which “effectively turned the Palestinians into aliens on their own soil.”
The Nation has described the push to establish Greater Israel as “the central ideological goal” of Benjamin Netyahu’s Likud Party, which has dominated Israeli politics in recent decades. In July 2018 too, the Zionist entity passed the “Nation State of the Jewish People” law. It enshrines “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value.” Meanwhile, the state is legally obligated “to encourage and promote” the “establishment and consolidation” of settlements, in illegally occupied territory.
This is based on the Jewish people’s “exclusive and inalienable right” to territory as far away from present Israel as Saudi Arabia. Old Testament terms such as “Judea and Samaria” are also employed. Markedly, this text is absent from the legislation’s official English translation. Zionist entity chiefs may not have wanted to make their irredentist, settler colonial ambitions quite so obvious at the time. Fast forward to today though, and Zionists at every level are wholly unabashed about their grand expansionist plans in West Asia.
The Syrian government’s fall has raised all manner of questions, concerns, and uncertainties locally and internationally. Can the country survive in its present form? Will Western-backed ‘former’ ultra-extremists be able to run a government? May the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which inflicted such harm to the Zionist entity and its Western puppet masters throughout 2023/4, be under threat? The list goes on. But one thing is certain - Israel is seeking to profit handsomely from the chaos. If successful, the results will be revolutionary.
‘Defensive Position’
On December 8th, a triumphant, smart-casual-bedecked Benjamin Netanyahu made a public address from an Israeli Occupation Force observation point, in the illegally-occupied Golan Heights. Taking personal credit for Bashar Assad’s ouster, he hailed “a historic day” for the region, which offered “great opportunity.” The Israeli leader bragged that the Zionist entity’s “forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran” had “set off a chain reaction” of upheaval, showing no sign of abating. Nonetheless, he warned of “significant dangers”.
One of those hazards, Netanyahu declared, was “the collapse of the he.” This largely forgotten accord was signed by Damascus and Tel Aviv following the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Both sides agreed not to mount hostile military operations of any kind against one another from their shared Golan Heights border. Perhaps surprisingly, it was scrupulously adhered to for 50 years. Now though, Assad’s fall means Syria’s military withdrawal from the area. In turn, the IOF is moving in.
Netanyahu announced orders had been given to the IOF to push deep into the demilitarized zone created by the Agreement, which is legally and historically Syrian territory. He claimed this was merely a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.” Yet, ever since, it has become increasingly unambiguous that for the Zionist entity, Assad’s departure not only greenlights the tearing up of longstanding diplomatic agreements, but the entire map of West Asia as we know it.
For the time being, the IOF has captured strategically invaluable Mount Hermon, Syria’s tallest mountain, from which Damascus can be seen just 40 miles away. Concurrently, hundreds of Zionist entity airstrikes have obliterated what remained of Syria’s military infrastructure, leaving the country completely defenseless from any and all incursions by air, land, and sea. The stage is plainly set for a major escalation and attempt by Israel to absorb further territory, at its behest. Who or what could stop them?
On December 10th 2024, while testifying at his long-running trial for industrial scale corruption in office, Netanyahu used the occasion to hint strongly at Assad’s defeat heralding a major reshaping of the region afoot. “Something tectonic has happened here, an earthquake that hasn’t happened in the 100 years since the Sykes-Picot Agreement,” the Israeli leader said, referencing the 1916 treaty under which Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire.
In an ironic twist, destruction of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided West Asia into artificial boundaries under Western colonial rule, was a regular feature of ISIS propaganda. The group cited the pact as a symbol of Western oppression against Islam, presenting its demise as a religious duty. With figures associated with ISIS now taking charge in Damascus, that vision could now be achieved, a prospect both serving Israel’s long-term goals, and aligning with Netanyahu’s long-standing ambitions.
‘Living Room’
In recent weeks, Israeli media has undergone a significant tonal shift. Historically, even critical Israeli news outlets and journalists been careful to frame the Zionist entity’s most egregious actions - ranging from military operations against neighboring countries to settlement expansion and land confiscation - in terms of “security” and “defense”. However, in the days leading up to Tel Aviv’s invasion of Lebanon on October 1st 2024, The Jerusalem Post published a strikingly candid explainer guide for its readers, enquiring, “Is Lebanon part of Israel’s promised territory?”
The outlet leaned on a Brooklyn-based Rabbi to “graciously” explain in detail how, based on multiple passages in Jewish scripture, “Lebanon is within the borders of Israel,” and Jews are therefore “obligated and commanded to conquer it.” The article was subsequently deleted after mass backlash and condemnation. But lessons from the debacle evidently weren’t learned in some quarters.
On December 4th - four days before the Syrian government’s fall - The Times of Israel published an op-ed on how “Israel’s exploding population” urgently required “Lebensraum”, a notorious German concept meaning “living room”, typically associated with the Nazis. The piece noted the Zionist entity’s population was projected to grow to 15.2 million by 2048, meaning Tel Aviv’s territory rapidly needed to be greatly expanded - perhaps not to the size of Russia, but certainly considerably.
This extremist rant was likewise purged from the web, due to widespread public outcry and mockery. Yet, since Assad’s fall, the term “Greater Israel” abounds readily in Zionist media, and seizure of territory from Tel Aviv’s neighbors is openly and eagerly discussed on primetime entity TV. Geopolitical analyst and founder of The Cradle Sharmine Narwani tells MintPress News that in a sense, the blatant nature of these discussions is a welcome development, as it lays bare Tel Aviv’s most extreme ambitions. However, she warns, attempts to expand the entity’s borders could backfire in catastrophic ways:
“The good news is, Israel has completely dropped all its masks. The bad news is it will go for land grabs everywhere. But this will be done opportunistically, and without much forethought or strategic planning. In the end, which country besides the US will be able to support Israel publicly? Tel Aviv will corner itself because the dominant Western discourse and EU law are still premised on human rights and ‘rules’. Allowing Israel these land grabs will also sink the Western-led global order.”
‘Primary Target’
Academic David Miller concurs the Zionist mask is off once and for all. Gravely, he tells MintPress News, “the fact that the CIA backed regime in Damascus is openly saying it is no threat to Israel is another indication regime change in Syria is a planned attempt to destroy the Axis of Resistance, and finally genocide all Palestinians.” Furthermore, he believes the writings of Zionism’s founder Theodore Herzl make clear seizing Lebanese and Syrian territory was Israel’s plan all along.
This malign objective, Miller adds, was echoed in many statements of countless prominent Zionists over decades, and “even codified and published as the Yinon Plan.” Little-known today, this extraordinary document was published in February 1982 in Hebrew journal Kivunim, under the title “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”. Its title is derived from author Oded Yinon, a shadowy former Israeli Foreign Ministry official and advisor to Zionisty entity leader Ariel Sharon.
Some sources claim the Yinon Plan provided a precise blueprint for major future events in West Asia, such as the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, Syrian dirty war, and rise of ISIS. It may be an exaggeration to suggest the Plan precisely portended all these developments, but nonetheless, much of the document’s contents are eerily prescient. Moreover, while many of its proposals failed to subsequently materialise, we are left to ponder whether they may now do so in future.
For example, the Plan noted there was significant potential for “domestic trouble” to erupt in Syria between “the Sunni majority and the Shiite Alawi ruling minority” - the latter constituting a “mere 12% of the population” - to the extent of “civil war”. While Damascus’ “strong military regime” was considered formidable, Yinon declared “the dissolution of Syria into ethnically or religiously unique areas” and destruction of its military power should be “Israel’s primary target” on its Eastern front, “in the long run”.
The Plan envisaged similar outcomes for other countries in Israel’s immediate vicinity. Lebanon was to be broken up into “five provinces” along religious and ethnic lines, partition “[serving] as a precedent for the entire Arab world.” Yinon wrote, “this state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run,and that aim is already within our reach today.” Four months later, the Zionist entity invaded Beirut, carrying out ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft along the way.
Once the Zionist entity’s immediate neighbors were neutralized, Iraq was to be crosshaired “later on”. Baghdad, “rich in oil” while “internally torn” between its Sunni and Shiite population, was “guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets.” Its destruction was “even more important for us than that of Syria,” due to its “power” and strength relative to other regional adversaries. Yinon hoped the then-ongoing Iran-Iraq war would “tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall”, preventing Baghdad from ‘[organizing] a struggle on a wide front against us”:
“Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon…It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.”
‘Permissive Approach’
Yinon also considered it a “political priority” to regain control of the Sinai peninsula, over which the Zionist entity had fought its Arab neighbors since inception, before relinquishing all claims to the region to Egypt under the March 1979 Camp David accords. He slammed these peace agreements, and looked forward to Cairo “[providing] Israel with the excuse [emphasis added] to take the Sinai back into our hands,” due to its vast “strategic, economic and energy” value:
“The economic situation in Egypt, the nature of the regime and its pan-Arab policy, will bring about a situation after April 1982 in which Israel will be forced to act directly or indirectly in order to regain control over Sinai…for the long run. Egypt does not constitute a military strategic problem due to its internal conflicts and it could be driven back to the post 1967 war situation in no more than one day.”
We are now well-past April 1982. In the intervening time, successive Israeli governments have demanded Egypt allow the IOF to relocate Gaza’s population to the Sinai. Netanyahu is particularly taken with the prospect. In the wake of October 7th 2023, official Israeli government and Zionist think tank policy papers have openly advocated driving Palestinians into the neighboring desert. It has been reported entity officials requested the US to pressure Cairo into allowing this mass displacement.
For the Zionist entity, this strategy’s appeal is self-evident. On top of emptying Gaza settlement, forcing Palestinians into Sinai would inevitably create mass chaos and tensions there, which could in Yinon’s phrase provide “the excuse” for Tel Aviv to militarily occupy the region, in the manner of the West Bank. Just as a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found” of course, as Netanyahu said of the IOF’s brazen creation of a prospective beachhead on Mount Hermon.
In December 2024, Haaretz observed Netanyahu was “angling for a legacy as the leader who expanded Israel’s borders”, and “wants to be remembered as the one who created Greater Israel.” Simultaneously, neoconservative Brookings Institute vice president Suzanne Maloney wrote for Empire house journal Foreign Affairs that the incoming Trump administration “will surely take a permissive approach to Israeli territorial ambitions.” After all, recent developments showed “a maximalist military approach yields spectacular strategic dividends along with domestic political benefits” for the Zionist entity.
We must hope, as Sharmine Narwani prophesied, Netanyahu’s megalomaniacal reveries of Greater Israel are just that, and come to nothing. Despite understandable mass anti-imperialist mourning over the Assad government’s demise, Tel Aviv faces a panoply of intractable internal problems. Contrary to claims of Tel Aviv’s population “exploding”, tens of thousands of resident are routinely fleeing due to Resistance attacks on the entity, while its economy has perhaps permanently been relegated to the doldrums, the country dependent on US largesse to endure.
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