Securing Greater Israel Requires the Eradication of Palestinian and Lebanese Civilians

The wholesale massacre and starvation of Palestinian civilians trapped in the walled-in Gaza Strip has continued on for a year now, with the official death toll close to 42,000 people. And as this grim anniversary drew nearer, instead of any attempt at establishing a ceasefire, Israel escalated its violent assaults on the West Bank and past weeks have seen it turn its military campaign upon Lebanon.

Israel has broadened the use of the genocidal approach it’s taken to Gaza, so that it’s now targeting Lebanese civilians on the pretext of assaulting Hezbollah in exactly the same way as it has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Strip with its stated focus being Hamas. And, despite this, Australian ministers have spent the past week condemning the display of illegal “terrorist” flags at local rallies.

Two facts have been increasingly ingrained in the Australian psyche during the long months of the Gaza genocide, and these are that the US is funding the worst atrocity the globe has borne witness to since World War II, so this is basically an American war, as well as the fact that the Australia government is keenly supporting Israel in its efforts.

And as the Gaza genocide drew closer to its 365th day, many here were questioning why Israel considers it could unleash a series of terrorist attacks upon the Lebanese public and then follow that with a massive attack upon its civilian population in much the same way that it has plundered Gaza over the past year. And the answer is that Zionists consider southern Lebanon and Gaza their own.

Wiped off the map

During an appearance before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2023, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu held up a map of Israel, which incorporated the entire Palestinian territory – the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – in a manner that considered these Palestinian regions as part of the sovereign nation of Israel.

And Netanyahu’s efforts at the UN served to highlight the greater goal of Zionism, which is a political doctrine that was formulated in Europe during the 1880s, in response to thousands of years of Jewish persecution on that continent, and its central tenet is the establishment of a Jewish state, Israel, upon the lands of historic Palestine. And his map hints at Zionism’s unfinished business.

The Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said in a tweet at the time, that the Israeli PM’s display of a map of Israel that “straddles the entire land from the river to the sea” provided an affront to the foundational principles of the UN, while Americans for Peace Now CEO Hadar Susskind wrote on X that the map of greater Israel was “the only honest part of his speech”.

Netanyahu’s map and the reaction to it point to a key underlying belief of Zionists, who consider the entire Palestinian territory is a rightful part of the Israeli state. And over the past year, a number of forums and events have been held in Israel where the discussion is focused on the acquisition of future Gazan real estate. This claim to land further extends to parts of Lebanon and other countries.

Indeed, despite Australian major party leaders Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton criticising pro-Palestinian protesters in this country for using the liberation chant “From the River to the Sea”, the Israeli political party Likud, which the nation’s PM Netanyahu heads, has always had the goal of “between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty” as part of its party platform.

The British mandate

A misconception continues in the public mind regarding Israel, as many believe the settler colonial project that established the state in 1948 was a response to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish population of Europe, during the Second World War, which resulted in the genociding of six million Jews. But the truth of the matter is that the Zionist agenda was settled during the First World War.

The Balfour Declaration is a 1917 statement by then British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, which was addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a key figure of the British Jewish community, which held that once the UK secured a mandate over historic Palestine following the Great War, the UK would facilitate the establishment of Israel: a nation for the Jewish people, who adhere to Zionism.

Yet, at the time of the declaration, the Jewish population of Palestine was only 10 percent of its entire populace. However, in the post war period, the British set about arranging the movement of Jewish people from Europe to immigrate to Palestine, and by 1935, the Jewish population of the region had risen to 27 percent of all those living on the land of the Palestinians.

The whole of Israel

Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl founded the Zionist movement in the mid-1880s, which sought the establishment of a Jewish state, via colonisation outside of Europe. And while other sites including the country of Argentina, were considered for the new nation of Israel, Herzl determined that Palestine was right as it contained the site of the biblical mount known as Zion.

In fact, the opening book of the Hebrew Bible, Genisis, chapter 15:18 to 21 provides that Yahweh promised Abraham the land of Israel, and the deity set out the borders that this land would be framed by. And this not only encompasses Israel today, but it further engulfs the remaining Palestinian territory, and parts of modern Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

However, later in the Bible, in the book of Numbers, in chapter 34:1 through to 12, the land promised to the Israelites is again laid out and this time the borders are narrower, encompassing Israel, the Palestinian territory, and parts of Jordan, Syria and southern Lebanon.

So, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was Tel Aviv seeking to expand its reach over what it considers to be its god given right to larger borders.

And the right-wing extremist forces that gained power in Israel in late 2022 and have been at the helm during the Gaza genocide, have always held greater Israel – or the whole of Israel – as their end goal.

So, this mission to usurp more foreign lands around its borders appears to have been fuelling the furore with which Israel has been attempting to annihilate the Palestinians of Gaza and it’s also informing Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and now further such breaches of international humanitarian law in the south of the sovereign nation of Lebanon.