Indoctrinating Israeli Youths to be Warriors

Indoctrinating Israeli Youths to Be Warriors - by Stephen Lendman

The modern roots go back to Zionism's founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897, its program being:

"Establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael."

Five decades later, it was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimizing Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to assure it against defenseless civilians, no match against their powerful adversary.

Leading up to and after its War of Independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, naked aggression as a form of self-defense, and occupation to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible to secure an ethnically pure Jewish state - policies called "Israelification (and) De-Arabization" to preserve a "Jewish character."

In his book, "The Making of Israeli Militarism, Uri Ben- Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves "ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield," given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet decades of Arab-Israeli conflict produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.

Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism "was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state (was) crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology." Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, then during the 1948 war, it "acquired full legitimacy" and became decisive in setting policy.

Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalized to where "the idea of implementing a military solution to (political problems) was not only enshrined as a value in its own right but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option."

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