Harry Targ
A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors, one or both of which act at the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities (Wikipedia).
The Crisis is Upon Us
The current Middle East crisis emerged with rapidity.
We have seen a seemingly unending escalation of violence against expanding
civilian targets in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, the Red Sea, and Israel. The ceasefire of late November was temporary. Also,
Muslims and Jews have been increasingly threatened within the United States. In
addition, powerful pressure groups and wealthy university donors are calling
for the crushing of dissenting voices on college campuses. And the corporate
media initially presented singular and one-sided narratives of the violence in the region but the egregious violence against the Palestinian people has changed the character of the coverage. Meanwhile, spokespersons of both parties proclaim that the United States needs
to continue to exert military power regionally and globally. Along with the multiplicity of causes of the horrific violence, United States support for Israel and its wars over the years in the Middle East have features of what some have called "proxy war."
Key Actors in the Middle East Drama
To better understand the immediate causes of this
Middle East crisis and its relationship to United States foreign policy the
major actors in the tense drama still need to be examined.
First, the Israeli
government is driven by a vision of regional hegemony and the elimination of
the Palestinian people as a political force. As Noam Chomsky has argued,
Israeli governments (and the United States) have always envisioned a region
based on a “Greater Israel,” that is Israeli control of the politics and
economics of Southern Lebanon, Western Syria, and Palestine. Crushing the
growing popularity of Hamas and Hezbollah is a necessity from the vantage point
of this vision and ultimately as well destroying their base of support in Syria
and Iran. The brutal assault on Israelis on October 7, 2023 provided an
excuse to indiscriminately target Palestinians living in Gaza.
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/3/israel_leak_gaza_expulsion_egypt
Second, the Middle East
crisis has profound consequences for the United States and the Biden
administration. President Biden by word and deed has given the green light to
Israel to expand its violence in Gaza and Lebanon. He has forestalled
diplomatic activity to bring a halt to the violence despite cosmetic visits by
Secretary of State Blinken and others to the region. He even until recently has
been slow to remove US citizens trapped in the war zones of Gaza. Even so,
President Biden is claiming credit for the ceasefire and prisoner exchange
despite the fact that there have been worldwide mobilizations protesting
Israeli and US policies. Further, continued
tension between the United States, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon rise. In the end,
this Middle East crisis could give renewed intellectual justification for the
neoconservative vision of a globalization of American power.
Third, this administration seems to be increasing support for militarism
in the face of growing danger of war in virtually every region of the world:
the Korean Peninsula, East and South Asia, Central Europe, and Latin
America and the Caribbean. The Biden administration, as with most
administrations since World War II, seems wedded to the unlimited use of
military force as opposed to diplomacy.
Fourth, “Political Islam” refers to those movements, primarily in the
Middle East, the Gulf, North Africa, and Asia that fuse the drive for political
power with religious fundamentalism. Paradoxically, Political Islam
drew much of its initial support from US global policy. For example, the United
States provided massive aid and training to rebels fighting against the
pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan in the 1980s, including the 9/11 enemy
icon, Osama Bin Laden. In fact, President Carter began funding the creation of
Political Islam in Afghanistan before the Soviet Union sent troops to that
country.
Hamas and Hezbollah, allied with outside actors Syria
and Iran, formed in the 1980s. They sought to capture the support of
Palestinians and their allies in response to growing Israeli brutality against
the Palestinian people and the corruption of the Palestine Liberation
Organization. There is much evidence that Israel gave financial support to
Hamas to weaken the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. While these two
formations have supported what is called terrorism and religious fundamentalism
they at the same time have provided significant social services and a political
voice for the repressed Palestinian population.
Finally, we need to reflect more systematically on Syria and Iran
as regional political actors sympathetic to the Palestinian people and opposed
by the state of Israel. It is clear that both Syria and Iran are targets of the
US. Israel receives huge military support from the United States in part
to “balance” the influence of other state actors in the region. The US wants to
control the flow of oil, and Israel wants to control territory and
people.
It remains to be seen whether the growing worldwide protest against the Israeli
war on Gaza and US acquiescence to it will bring a desperately needed permanent
ceasefire and all Middle East negotiations in the future, and whether antiwar
candidates can win victories in 2024 US elections. The enormous increase in antiwar
and free Palestine movements in the United States and growing opposition to the
United States and Israel in the Global South suggest the emergence of a “second
global power,” the power of the people against militaristic governments.
Discover the Networks, a project of The
David Horowitz Freedom Center, for once summarized my views correctly:
“Over the years, Targ has been outspoken
regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East. Asserting that
Palestinians suffer widely from “joblessness, land theft, food insecurity, and
grotesque economic and political inequalities” as a result of Israeli
oppression, he lamented in 2017 that “Israel, with United States support,
opposes serious negotiations with what is now the Palestinian
Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled
Gaza.” Calling also for “the creation of a viable secular Israeli state in
which all participate or a separate Palestinian state with land repatriation
and guarantees of security from Israeli military attack,” Targ argued that ‘the
United States should stop fueling the violence in the region by ending military
aid to Israel.’ ”
