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“Greater Israel”: A Not So Hidden Ambition
Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).
The concept of “Eretz Israel” (Hebrew “Land of Israel”, with the connotation of expansionism that “Greater Israel” implies in English) is based on a merger of religious fundamentalism and modern political ethno-nationalism, whereby ancient texts are used to justify a modern military expansionist state.
Military invasion attempts into South Lebanon since October 2024, along with recurrent calls for expanding the entity’s border by occupation leaders, have revived contention over long-entrenched Zionist territorial ambitions in the region. The shameless display of a map that engulfs Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spotted on the sleeves of occupation soldiers is hardly symbolic, nor exclusive to fringe elements of settler society. The concept of ‘Greater Israel’, long dismissed by “Israelis” and their supporters as a conspiracy theory promoted by paranoid Arabs and anti-Semites, verily captures the essence of Zionism as an expansionist settler-colonial movement with biblical, territorial claims that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.
LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDE
There is a common misconception that attributes the expansionist behavior of the Israeli entity to the most extreme factions of its society, represented by ultranationalist settlers. These are the ones who hold beliefs from biblical scriptures, whom are often caught on camera harassing and killing Palestinians, stealing their homes, burning their olive trees, and destroying crops and killing herds, all under the full protection of the Occupation Army (IOF) of course. However, to limit the occupation’s aggressive aspirations to conspicuous right-wing extremists is a misreading that leads to the prevailing tendency to appeal to left-right, or religious-secular, nuances within the Zionist entity. This deceptive framing is especially popular among Western liberals.
The public “Israeli” attitude towards its internal affairs does, however, reflect a polarity. The culture is characterized by a religious-secular divide, which involves ongoing debates over the status of religion, the character of the entity as a “Jewish state”, and its territorial borders. This left-right dichotomy exists over a range of internal issues concerned with political and socio-economic questions. However, when it comes to the colonial-expansionist identity of the entity, that dispute most certainly dissolves, and makes no difference to those on the receiving end of its terror.
“Israeli” leaders from across the political spectrum have collectively and directly contributed to the military occupation of Palestine, creeping into more territory by the day, in a steady, consistent and systematic manner since the very establishment of the entity. To clarify, it is not only the likes of Daniela Weiss, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose aspirations are problematic, and dangerous, and “extreme”.
To name just a few, the first Prime Minister of the occupation state, the ‘secular’ David Ben Gurion, who led the largest socialist- Zionist party, was also a chief architect of the 1948 Nakba. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the founder of the Labor Party, who occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War. The most ‘moderate’ of them all, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as ‘a peacemaker,’ actually accelerated land theft in the West Bank, and when asked, “what is to be done with the Palestinian population?” he responded with a hand gesture motioning to ‘drive them out!’
Most importantly, these leaders did not emerge from a vacuum; they were brought to power by “Israeli” voters, who also showed overwhelming support for the ongoing genocide against Gaza. Back in November 2023, only 3% of Israelis were in favor of a permanent, “unconditional” ceasefire. The annihilation of Gaza unifies the settler state left and right alike.
FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATES
The possibility of establishing a Zionist entity in Uganda, Argentina or the Sinai Peninsula was initially considered towards the end of the 19th century by Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. However, the idea that a Jewish entity must spread across the so-called ‘historic biblical land of the Jews’ in Palestine took precedence.
In his 1898 diaries, Herzl mentions a discussion with Max Bodenheimer, another notable figure of the Zionist movement and his close associate, who suggests that a ‘Jewish State’ should extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”, an idea which Herzl approved to be ‘in part excellent’. In his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, Herzl envisions an Israeli entity that would set out as follows: “the northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia in Turkiye; the southern, the Suez Canal’. He also points out that it would serve as a “wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”.
It’s worth mentioning that Herzl’s legacy still reverberates powerfully across the entity today, to the extent that the Knesset passed the Herzl Law as recently as 2004. The Herzl Law makes it mandatory for all Israelis to study his work in order to “structure the state of Israel, its goal and image in accordance with his Zionist vision”.
Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine who assisted in drafting “Israel’s” Declaration of Independence, explained at the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 9, 1947 that “the Promised Land was quite a large one:, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates”, and that “the promise was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about 4000 years ago and it was reaffirmed to Moses”.
There is no shortage of examples of Zionist leaders expressing their ambition of establishing a “Greater Israel”, but it is important to keep one thing in mind: The Zionist movement underwent many phases, and Zionist ideologues’ opinions about the exact definition of ‘a greater Israel’ and the ideal delineation of its borders fluctuated throughout the years.
ONGOING COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE
Given the constraining circumstances surrounding Zionist colonization in its early days, Zionist expediency understood that to gain leverage, a temporary compromise between its grandiose territorial ambitions, and its immediate instrumental needs, was required.
The Zionist movement was willing to come to terms with less territory at first, in exchange for a ‘state’ with political sovereignty. However, its determination to seize more when a ripe opportunity came along was never abandoned, as a comparison of historic and present-day maps reveals.
In 1948, the Zionist state stole 78% of Palestine. Ever since, new rounds of aggression and expansion have been implemented in an unfettered manner. Since 1967, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands have been stolen. In the first months of the genocide in Gaza alone, Israel stole 1,270 hectares of Palestinian land.
In fact, records of evidence show that through exercising patience, the colonial occupation has patiently been playing the long game, gradually bringing more Palestinian land under its control by the day. To claim otherwise – that Israel will remain indefinitely satisfied with dominating only a fragment of the land that it maintains belongs to the Jewish people – would be absurd. In fact, this was accurately expressed in 1937 by Ben Gurion, a central figure in the founding phase of the colonial entity, who also served as its first Prime Minister for almost 15 years “a partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning…’’, and “we shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them”, implying that Israel should never settle for any limitations concerning its borders. This is precisely why, up until the present day, Israel has failed to define its borders.
THE LITANI RIVER
If we consider our current situation, one year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in South Lebanon, something it has incessantly attempted to do since its inception: in 1948, as well as 1978, 1982-2000 and 2006. Amid its current inability to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against it in support of Gaza, Israel has been seeking to change the status quo by pushing the resistance away from Lebanon’s southern border, and beyond the Litani specifically. Historically, the Litani River has always held strategic importance for Zionist ambitions.
The Litani, the longest river in Lebanon, stretches 170 kilometers southward from the Beqaa Valley, flows along the eastern front of Lebanon’s mountain range, and diverts sharply westward towards the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tyre. Historical documents revealing Zionist plans to take control of it date back as far as prior to the establishment of the entity. Its importance is due to it being a vital water source, along with the fact that its surroundings are of military-strategic value.
The head of the World Zionist Organization, who would later become the occupation state’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put forward a map for a proposed Jewish colony at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The map he presented fell short of the land guaranteed in accordance with ‘God’s Promise’, from the Nile to the Euphrates. Rather, the proposed borders were drawn according to geopolitical calculations to dominate water resources in the region, incorporating:
“First the whole of Mandated Palestine … secondly, southern Lebanon, including the towns of Tyre and Sidon, the headwaters of the River Jordan on Mount Hermon and the southern portion of the Litani River… thirdly, on the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, including the town of Quneitra, the River Yarmuk and El-Himmeh Hot Springs … fourthly, on the Jordan front, the whole of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Eastern Highlands up to the outskirts of Amman, running southwards along the Hejaz Railway to the Gulf of Aqaba, leaving Jordan with no access to the sea; fifthly, on the Egyptian front, from EI-Arish on the Mediterranean in a straight southerly direction to the Gulf of Aqaba”.
The priority of accessing water resources was also articulated in a 1919 letter Weizmann sent to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister and head of the British delegation, in which he wrote:
“The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon [Golan Heights], from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River in Lebanon”
It wasn’t until 1967 that Israel would partially fulfill its aspiration of controlling more territory and dominating water resources by occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, East of the Jordan River, as well as the Sea of Galilee, also known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ —but not the Litani River. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was quoted saying that “Israel had achieved provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon.” The idea of occupying South Lebanon was enthusiastically adopted by Moshe Dayan as well as Ben Gurion, and was also referred to in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett.
Ben Gurion’s conviction of an Israel with the Litani as its northern border was noted in a book he published in 1918. This idea would remain an essential part of his vision for the entity for years to come, as would the idea of redrawing the borders by fragmenting Lebanon to allow for the establishment of a Christian state with with the Litani as its southern border managed by ‘Israel’.
Zionist plans to annex the region or expand its control over it are not a thing of the past – on the contrary, they always tend to resurface. Established in 2024, a group called “The South Lebanon Movement” has been advocating for the colonization of South Lebanon.
HEGEMONY THROUGH DISRUPTION
Zionist expansionism does not only manifest as direct occupation and control of territory. When the entity abstains from or is unable to claim land, it makes use of other cost- effective tools to spread its hegemony.
This was best articulated in a notorious article that recently resurfaced entitled “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties” published in 1982 in the quarterly Kivunim – a journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization that encapsulates the Zionist ideology. The piece was written by journalist and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who precisely advocated for a strategic divide-and-rule plan to fragment the region in Israel’s favor:
“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. 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”.
This describes, in great detail, the current track on which the Levant is heading, confirming the premise of this strategy which was laid out forty years ago. More recently in 2002, then- former president Netanyahu testified before US Congress in fervent favor of “taking out Saddam” by invading and destroying Iraq. This was not about regional peace — remember that a large part of Iraq is contained in “Greater Israel” — the goal was fragmenting and weakening all nations contained within the land of “God’s promise”. Therefore rather than being cohesive nations, the fragmentation of these historically diverse states into sectarian and ethnic groupings, where sub- state identities are exacerbated and mired in conflict, makes them more vulnerable to “Israeli” hegemony, and less capable of projecting power and coordinating action against it. This creates the ideal grounds for submission to the entity’s greater plans. In that case, even if a “Greater Israel” isn’t physically achieved, it will at the very least still be capable of imposing its supremacy over the region.
CONCLUSION
It requires no extensive amount of research to identify from “Israel’s” behavioral pattern, along with statements issued by its officials, that its appetite for expansion is far from quenched. We are witnessing this appetite in real-time. The trajectory of this entity, since its illegitimate establishment in 1948, is self-evident to those of us who have been experiencing its brutality daily. It makes no difference whether it is driven by biblical scriptures associated with the return of “God’s chosen people to the promised land” and the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, or rooted in pragmatic secularism, linked its current territorial occupation, conspires to annex more land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or conquer the entire area, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the supremacy engrained in its very foundation makes it a danger that cannot be overstated. Equally dangerous are the misleading attempts to dismiss awareness of its territorial ambitions and muddy its imperialistic nature.
Failure to address the extent to which these expansionist ideas are inscribed indelibly in their settler-colonial project will have detrimental implications. Even the so-called “two- state solution”, always a distraction from recognizing the fundamental illegality of the occupation, is an illusionary mantra that has been rejected by the “Israeli” regime itself, which is colonizing more land by the day with full support from the West. This support for “Israel’s” manifest destiny is echoed in the shocking 2019 presidential declaration that the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded by Israel in 1967, were to be recognized as part of the Zionist state. As sitting senior ministers within the occupation government openly declare their intent to invade and colonize Lebanon and Syria, what is to stop their US-backed armies from furthering their goals of occupying the entire region from Jordan to Iraq?
When IOF soldiers wear a “Greater Israel” badge on their uniform, signaling their aggressive intentions towards the whole region, we must believe them.
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{
"article":
{
"title" : "“Greater Israel”: A Not So Hidden Ambition",
"author" : "Sarah Sinno",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/greater-israel-ambition",
"date" : "2024-11-01 13:13:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/greater-israel-fig-2-thumb.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).",
"content" : "Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).The concept of “Eretz Israel” (Hebrew “Land of Israel”, with the connotation of expansionism that “Greater Israel” implies in English) is based on a merger of religious fundamentalism and modern political ethno-nationalism, whereby ancient texts are used to justify a modern military expansionist state.Military invasion attempts into South Lebanon since October 2024, along with recurrent calls for expanding the entity’s border by occupation leaders, have revived contention over long-entrenched Zionist territorial ambitions in the region. The shameless display of a map that engulfs Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spotted on the sleeves of occupation soldiers is hardly symbolic, nor exclusive to fringe elements of settler society. The concept of ‘Greater Israel’, long dismissed by “Israelis” and their supporters as a conspiracy theory promoted by paranoid Arabs and anti-Semites, verily captures the essence of Zionism as an expansionist settler-colonial movement with biblical, territorial claims that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDEThere is a common misconception that attributes the expansionist behavior of the Israeli entity to the most extreme factions of its society, represented by ultranationalist settlers. These are the ones who hold beliefs from biblical scriptures, whom are often caught on camera harassing and killing Palestinians, stealing their homes, burning their olive trees, and destroying crops and killing herds, all under the full protection of the Occupation Army (IOF) of course. However, to limit the occupation’s aggressive aspirations to conspicuous right-wing extremists is a misreading that leads to the prevailing tendency to appeal to left-right, or religious-secular, nuances within the Zionist entity. This deceptive framing is especially popular among Western liberals.The public “Israeli” attitude towards its internal affairs does, however, reflect a polarity. The culture is characterized by a religious-secular divide, which involves ongoing debates over the status of religion, the character of the entity as a “Jewish state”, and its territorial borders. This left-right dichotomy exists over a range of internal issues concerned with political and socio-economic questions. However, when it comes to the colonial-expansionist identity of the entity, that dispute most certainly dissolves, and makes no difference to those on the receiving end of its terror.“Israeli” leaders from across the political spectrum have collectively and directly contributed to the military occupation of Palestine, creeping into more territory by the day, in a steady, consistent and systematic manner since the very establishment of the entity. To clarify, it is not only the likes of Daniela Weiss, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose aspirations are problematic, and dangerous, and “extreme”.To name just a few, the first Prime Minister of the occupation state, the ‘secular’ David Ben Gurion, who led the largest socialist- Zionist party, was also a chief architect of the 1948 Nakba1. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the founder of the Labor Party, who occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War. The most ‘moderate’ of them all, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as ‘a peacemaker,’ actually accelerated land theft in the West Bank, and when asked, “what is to be done with the Palestinian population?” he responded with a hand gesture motioning to ‘drive them out!’2Most importantly, these leaders did not emerge from a vacuum; they were brought to power by “Israeli” voters, who also showed overwhelming support for the ongoing genocide against Gaza. Back in November 2023, only 3% of Israelis were in favor of a permanent, “unconditional” ceasefire3. The annihilation of Gaza unifies the settler state left and right alike.FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATESThe possibility of establishing a Zionist entity in Uganda, Argentina or the Sinai Peninsula4 was initially considered towards the end of the 19th century by Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. However, the idea that a Jewish entity must spread across the so-called ‘historic biblical land of the Jews’ in Palestine took precedence.In his 1898 diaries, Herzl mentions a discussion with Max Bodenheimer, another notable figure of the Zionist movement and his close associate, who suggests that a ‘Jewish State’ should extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”5, an idea which Herzl approved to be ‘in part excellent’. In his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, Herzl envisions an Israeli entity that would set out as follows: “the northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia in Turkiye; the southern, the Suez Canal’6. He also points out that it would serve as a “wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”7.It’s worth mentioning that Herzl’s legacy still reverberates powerfully across the entity today, to the extent that the Knesset passed the Herzl Law8 as recently as 2004. The Herzl Law makes it mandatory for all Israelis to study his work in order to “structure the state of Israel, its goal and image in accordance with his Zionist vision”.Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine who assisted in drafting “Israel’s” Declaration of Independence, explained at the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 9, 1947 that “the Promised Land was quite a large one:, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates”, and that “the promise was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about 4000 years ago and it was reaffirmed to Moses”9.There is no shortage of examples of Zionist leaders expressing their ambition of establishing a “Greater Israel”, but it is important to keep one thing in mind: The Zionist movement underwent many phases, and Zionist ideologues’ opinions about the exact definition of ‘a greater Israel’ and the ideal delineation of its borders fluctuated throughout the years.ONGOING COLONIZATION OF PALESTINEGiven the constraining circumstances surrounding Zionist colonization in its early days10, Zionist expediency understood that to gain leverage, a temporary compromise between its grandiose territorial ambitions, and its immediate instrumental needs, was required.The Zionist movement was willing to come to terms with less territory at first, in exchange for a ‘state’ with political sovereignty11. However, its determination to seize more when a ripe opportunity came along was never abandoned, as a comparison of historic and present-day maps reveals.In 1948, the Zionist state stole 78% of Palestine. Ever since, new rounds of aggression and expansion have been implemented in an unfettered manner12. Since 1967, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands have been stolen13. In the first months of the genocide in Gaza alone, Israel stole 1,270 hectares of Palestinian land14.In fact, records of evidence show that through exercising patience, the colonial occupation has patiently been playing the long game, gradually bringing more Palestinian land under its control by the day. To claim otherwise – that Israel will remain indefinitely satisfied with dominating only a fragment of the land that it maintains belongs to the Jewish people – would be absurd15. In fact, this was accurately expressed in 1937 by Ben Gurion, a central figure in the founding phase of the colonial entity, who also served as its first Prime Minister for almost 15 years “a partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning…16’’, and “we shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them”17, implying that Israel should never settle for any limitations concerning its borders. This is precisely why, up until the present day, Israel has failed to define its borders.THE LITANI RIVERIf we consider our current situation, one year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in South Lebanon, something it has incessantly attempted to do since its inception: in 1948, as well as 1978, 1982-2000 and 2006. Amid its current inability to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against it in support of Gaza, Israel has been seeking to change the status quo by pushing the resistance away from Lebanon’s southern border, and beyond the Litani specifically. Historically, the Litani River has always held strategic importance for Zionist ambitions.The Litani, the longest river in Lebanon, stretches 170 kilometers southward from the Beqaa Valley, flows along the eastern front of Lebanon’s mountain range, and diverts sharply westward towards the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tyre. Historical documents revealing Zionist plans to take control of it date back as far as prior to the establishment of the entity. Its importance is due to it being a vital water source, along with the fact that its surroundings are of military-strategic value.The head of the World Zionist Organization, who would later become the occupation state’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put forward a map for a proposed Jewish colony at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The map he presented fell short of the land guaranteed in accordance with ‘God’s Promise’, from the Nile to the Euphrates18. Rather, the proposed borders were drawn according to geopolitical calculations to dominate water resources in the region, incorporating:“First the whole of Mandated Palestine … secondly, southern Lebanon, including the towns of Tyre and Sidon, the headwaters of the River Jordan on Mount Hermon and the southern portion of the Litani River… thirdly, on the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, including the town of Quneitra, the River Yarmuk and El-Himmeh Hot Springs … fourthly, on the Jordan front, the whole of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Eastern Highlands up to the outskirts of Amman, running southwards along the Hejaz Railway to the Gulf of Aqaba, leaving Jordan with no access to the sea; fifthly, on the Egyptian front, from EI-Arish on the Mediterranean in a straight southerly direction to the Gulf of Aqaba”.19The priority of accessing water resources was also articulated in a 1919 letter Weizmann sent to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister and head of the British delegation, in which he wrote:“The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon [Golan Heights], from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River in Lebanon”It wasn’t until 1967 that Israel would partially fulfill its aspiration of controlling more territory and dominating water resources by occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, East of the Jordan River, as well as the Sea of Galilee, also known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ —but not the Litani River. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was quoted saying that “Israel had achieved provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon.” The idea of occupying South Lebanon was enthusiastically adopted by Moshe Dayan as well as Ben Gurion20, and was also referred to in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett21.Ben Gurion’s conviction of an Israel with the Litani as its northern border was noted in a book he published in 191822. This idea would remain an essential part of his vision for the entity for years to come23, as would the idea of redrawing the borders by fragmenting Lebanon to allow for the establishment of a Christian state with with the Litani as its southern border managed by ‘Israel’.Zionist plans to annex the region or expand its control over it are not a thing of the past – on the contrary, they always tend to resurface. Established in 2024, a group called “The South Lebanon Movement” has been advocating for the colonization of South Lebanon24.HEGEMONY THROUGH DISRUPTIONZionist expansionism does not only manifest as direct occupation and control of territory. When the entity abstains from or is unable to claim land, it makes use of other cost- effective tools to spread its hegemony.This was best articulated in a notorious article that recently resurfaced25 entitled “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties” published in 1982 in the quarterly Kivunim – a journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization that encapsulates the Zionist ideology. The piece was written by journalist and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who precisely advocated for a strategic divide-and-rule plan to fragment the region in Israel’s favor:“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. 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”26.This describes, in great detail, the current track on which the Levant is heading, confirming the premise of this strategy which was laid out forty years ago. More recently in 2002, then- former president Netanyahu testified before US Congress in fervent favor of “taking out Saddam” by invading and destroying Iraq. This was not about regional peace — remember that a large part of Iraq is contained in “Greater Israel” — the goal was fragmenting and weakening all nations contained within the land of “God’s promise”. Therefore rather than being cohesive nations, the fragmentation of these historically diverse states into sectarian and ethnic groupings, where sub- state identities are exacerbated and mired in conflict, makes them more vulnerable to “Israeli” hegemony, and less capable of projecting power and coordinating action against it. This creates the ideal grounds for submission to the entity’s greater plans. In that case, even if a “Greater Israel” isn’t physically achieved, it will at the very least still be capable of imposing its supremacy over the region.CONCLUSIONIt requires no extensive amount of research to identify from “Israel’s” behavioral pattern, along with statements issued by its officials, that its appetite for expansion is far from quenched. We are witnessing this appetite in real-time. The trajectory of this entity, since its illegitimate establishment in 1948, is self-evident to those of us who have been experiencing its brutality daily. It makes no difference whether it is driven by biblical scriptures associated with the return of “God’s chosen people to the promised land” and the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, or rooted in pragmatic secularism, linked its current territorial occupation, conspires to annex more land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or conquer the entire area, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the supremacy engrained in its very foundation makes it a danger that cannot be overstated. Equally dangerous are the misleading attempts to dismiss awareness of its territorial ambitions and muddy its imperialistic nature.Failure to address the extent to which these expansionist ideas are inscribed indelibly in their settler-colonial project will have detrimental implications. Even the so-called “two- state solution”, always a distraction from recognizing the fundamental illegality of the occupation, is an illusionary mantra that has been rejected by the “Israeli” regime itself, which is colonizing more land by the day with full support from the West. This support for “Israel’s” manifest destiny is echoed in the shocking 2019 presidential declaration that the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded by Israel in 1967, were to be recognized as part of the Zionist state. As sitting senior ministers within the occupation government openly declare their intent to invade and colonize Lebanon and Syria, what is to stop their US-backed armies from furthering their goals of occupying the entire region from Jordan to Iraq?When IOF soldiers wear a “Greater Israel” badge on their uniform, signaling their aggressive intentions towards the whole region, we must believe them.REFERENCES Farber, S. (2020). A Zionist State at Any Cost. Jacobin. Retrieved from: https:// jacobin.com/2020/04/david-ben-gurion-state-at-any-cost-review ↩ Shipler, K. (1979). Israel Bars Rabin From Relating ‘48 Eviction of Arabs. New YorkTimes. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/23/archives/israel- bars-rabin-from-relating-48-eviction-of-arabs-sympathy-for.html ↩ JP Staff (202). Most Israelis support humanitarian pause, but only if hostages released – poll.The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from: https://www.jpost.com/israel- news/article-772623 ↩ Erakat, N. (2019). Justice For Some: Law and Question in Palestine. Standford University Press. ↩ Herzl,T. (1960).The complete diaries ofTheodor Herzl (R. Patai, Ed.; H. Zohn, Trans.). Herzl Press. ↩ United Nations General Assembly Thirty Second Session (1977). New York. Retrieved from: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/803/48/pdf/nl780348.pdf ↩ Herzl, T. (1896) The Jewish State. Leipzig and Wien: M. Breitenstein’s Verlags- Buchhandlung ↩ Abuhazeira, O. (2007). Herzl Day. YNet News. Retrieved from: https://www. ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3393335,00.html ↩ United Nations General Assembly (1947). Special Committee on Palestine: Verbatim Record of the Twenty Fourth Meeting. Jerusalem Palestine. Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-210700/ ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ Galnoor, I. (2009).The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919-1947). Israel Studies, 14(2), 74–87. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30245854?read- now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents ↩ Haddad, M. (2020). Palestine and Israel: Mapping an Annexation. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/26/palestine-and-israel- mapping-an-annexation ↩ Israel’s Occupation: 50Years of Dispossession (2017). Amnesty International. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel- occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/ ↩ Imbert, L. (2024). Israel grabs largest tract of West Bank land in three decades, Le Monde. Retrieved from: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/07/06/ israel-grabs-largest-tract-of-west-bank-land-in-three-decades_6676844_4.html ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ Bar-Zohar, M. (1977). Ben-Gurion: A Biography. NewYork: Delacorte Press. ↩ Chomsky, N. (1984). The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Montreal: Black Rose Books. ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ United Nations General Assembly Thirty Second Session (1977). New York. Retrieved from: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/803/48/pdf/nl780348.pdf ↩ Israel in Lebanon (2009). Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera. com/news/2009/8/12/israel-in-lebanon ↩ Rokach, L. (1985) Israel’s SacredTerrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary and Other Documents. Belmont, Massachusetts: Association of Arab American University Graduates ↩ Ben Gurion, D. & Ben Zvi,Y. (1918). EretzYisrael in the Past and Present. New York: Poale Zion Palestine Committee. ↩ Shlaim, A. (2001).The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company ↩ OLJ (2024). Who is this ‘small group’ of Israelis who dream of colonizing southern Lebanon? L’Orient Le Jour. Retrieved from: https://today.lorientlejour. com/article/1410033/who-is-this-small-group-of-israelis-who-dream-of-colonizing- southern-lebanon.html ↩ Matoi, E. (2024). Greater Israel: an Ongoing Expansion Plan for the Middle East and North Africa. Middle East Political and Economic Institute. Retrieved from: https://mepei.com/greater-israel-an-ongoing-expansion-plan-for-the-middle- east-and-north-africa/ ↩ Yinon, O. (1982). A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. Kivunim. Retrieved from: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/A_strategy_for_Israel_in_the_Nineteen_ Eighties.pdf ↩ "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Who is COP for, really?",
"author" : "Keyah Hanwi",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/who-is-cop-for-really",
"date" : "2025-11-07 09:00:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com",
"excerpt" : "For thirty years, the world has looked at COP as the path to climate progress. But the reality is different. COP isn’t failing; it’s working exactly as it was designed: protecting and further producing capital.",
"content" : "For thirty years, the world has looked at COP as the path to climate progress. But the reality is different. COP isn’t failing; it’s working exactly as it was designed: protecting and further producing capital.COP has made promises it never intended to keep. It is not about saving the planet, but about protecting profit and power. COP3 was the beginning of the Global North making broken promises. At COP3, the Kyoto Protocol was proposed as a plan to target emissions cuts from industrialized countries. The agreement paved the way for carbon markets, allowing countries and corporations to trade pollution credits instead of actually cutting emissions. The U.S. signed but never ratified it (source), Canada later withdrew (source). Europe met targets in part by outsourcing oil emissions through offsets, often harming and displacing frontline communities (source). What came out of COP3 was not climate justice but a system that let the Global North maintain its power and profit while exporting the consequences.The broken promises of Kyoto set the blueprint for decades of destructive extraction and dispossession that followed. The Global South is not a side note; it is the beating heart of the climate crisis and the first to bleed. While wealthy countries build their prosperity on fossil fuels, the Global South faces devastating man-made ‘natural disasters’ floods, fires, and droughts. These communities continue to fight to protect land, water, and futures, even as rich nations push “net zero by 2050” while backing fossil fuel interests. Promised climate finance remains late, insufficient, and often deepens debt, while Indigenous leaders and frontline activists are routinely excluded from decision-making.Decades later, those same dynamics played out in Glasgow during COP26, which ignited a surge of fossil fuel industry influence and greenwashing. While earlier COPs like COP3 set the foundation, COP26 made it impossible to ignore who these summits are really for. Over 500 fossil fuel lobbyists were present, more than any country’s single delegation, and more than the total number of representatives from the most climate vulnerable nations combined (source).This was not a flaw in the process. This was the process. Inside the Blue Zone, oil executives and carbon traders ran panels while Indigenous people were shut out. The industries fueling climate collapse were prioritized. Frontline communities were left with surveillance, side events, or silence. COP26 didn’t just accommodate fossil fuel power, it handed it a badge and a microphone. Oil companies secured deeper access through sponsorships and side events, pushing carbon markets and voluntary commitments instead of binding action.At COP28, there were approximately 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists, over 900 more than the total number of delegates from the ten most climate vulnerable countries, which numbered around 1,500 (source). Indigenous people and other climate activists made up only a small fraction of that number. The UAE’s state oil company had access to summit emails (source), while COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber used his power to pursue $100 billion in oil and gas deals (source).During COP29 the fossil fuel industry dominated the conversation. They bought access by sponsoring events, and shaped the entire agenda. Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Glencore and TotalEnergies pushed carbon trading schemes and false climate solutions while the planet burned (source). This was never about protecting the environment. Indigenous and frontline activists were pushed aside and silenced. COP29 made it clear: these summits serve capital, not people. COP30 is accelerating the greenwashing that is central to COP.As the international spotlight shines on the Amazon, the greenwashing only intensifies. From November 10-21 COP30 will take place in Belém, the capital of Pará, Brazil in the heart of the Amazon. The summit is being presented as a milestone for climate action while politicians fast track the destruction of the environment. During a visit to Pará in August 2023, President Lula said: “I leave Pará with the certainty that we are going to hold the best COP in history (source). But what is the reality? What does COP30 mean for the people actually living in the Amazon? Who is it really for?As COP30 draws attention to the Amazon, corporate greenwashing takes many forms. On September 17th, the mining company Vale S.A. and Rock in Rio hosted the music festival “Amazon Forever” (source). The festival was a thinly veiled attempt to sanitize the image of a mining giant with a legacy of poisoning and displacing Indigenous communities in Indonesia (source) and the Brazilian Amazon. In February 2025, Brazil’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against Vale, the Brazilian government, and the state of Pará over heavy metal contamination found in the Xikrin Indigenous people. A Federal University of Pará study revealed dangerously high levels of lead, mercury, and nickel in the hair of nearly all 720 individuals surveyed in the Xikrin do Cateté Indigenous Territory.This contamination is linked to Vale’s nickel mining operations at Onça-Puma, which polluted the Cateté River, a vital water source for the community. Despite an agreement in 2022 for monthly compensation, health concerns were unaddressed, prompting legal action demanding a permanent health monitoring program and environmental oversight. Vale disputes responsibility, claiming its operations aren’t to blame and that it monitors water quality around its sites (source).In Pará, a COP30 project called Nova Doca dumps waste in poor Black neighborhoods while sewage systems serve the rich. Untreated sewage flows into local waters. This is environmental racism masked by greenwashing (source).The contradictions run so deep that even sacred guardians are being turned into COP30’s mascot. Curupira, a forest guardian whose feet face backwards to mislead hunters and invaders, has been chosen as the official mascot for COP30 (source). This choice feels like a mockery of Curupira. The government is pushing laws opening the door for land grabs, extraction, and displacement. Forests continue to burn. Curupira is not a mascot. Curupira does not forgive those who harm the forest. He takes revenge, and many attending COP30 would be the exact people he would take revenge on.COP30 is sold as a celebration of the Amazon, but the laws and destructive projects being pushed through tell a different story. The government fast tracked construction of Avenida Liberdade, a four lane highway that will cut through Indigenous and Quilombola territories (source).Quilombola are descendants of enslaved Africans who made Brazil their home, preserving their culture and freedom in remote areas. They have distinct identities and legal rights to their lands, which are constantly threatened by land grabs and development. They have stood in mutual solidarity with Indigenous peoples in Brazil, fighting together to defend their territories and cultures against exploitation.In Brazil, highways often cut through these lands. BR-163 cuts through Pará and Mato Grosso, built to move soy and used by land grabbers and illegal loggers. BR-319, set to be repaved through the Amazon, threatens dozens of communities with invasion and displacement. These roads don’t bring protection or progress, they bring violence and destruction. One recent incident occurred in December 2024, when Guarani Kaiowá and Terena communities protesting for basic access to drinking water faced violent repression by police forces who could quickly mobilize thanks to these roads (source). Such infrastructure facilitates state violence against Indigenous resistance, widening the threats faced by these communities.As a Lakota, seeing brutalization of Guarani Kaiowá and Terena at the hands of military police for protesting for water painfully echoed the fight at Standing Rock. Water is sacred. Water is life. Violence is no accident, it’s embedded into law.Indigenous and Quilombola territories remain under threat and await proper demarcation. The Brazilian Senate passed bills that threaten land rights. In May, they approved PL 2159/21, the Devastation Bill, which dismantles Brazil’s environmental licensing system, making it easier for corporations to push through destructive projects. It accelerates deforestation, putting 32.6% of Indigenous lands and 80.1% of Quilombola territories at risk. On the final day permitted by law, President Lula vetoed 63 of the bill’s nearly 400 provisions, including clauses that would have allowed medium-impact projects to bypass full environmental review and provisions that would have excluded Indigenous and Quilombola communities from consultation. While these vetoes preserve some environmental protections, the law still allows the federal government to accelerate certain ‘strategic’ projects, leaving communities and ecosystems at continued risk (source).Lula recently approved an offshore oil drilling project near the mouth of the Amazon River, signaling continued support for fossil fuel extraction even as COP30 approaches (source). This decision highlights the tension between Brazil’s role as host of a major climate summit and its ongoing promotion of environmentally destructive projects. Days after the Senate approved the Devastation Bill, PL 717/24 was approved (source). If it becomes law, it would suspend the demarcation of Indigenous and Quilombola lands, including Imbuh and Morro dos Cavalos.In April, after decades of struggle, the Guarani Mbya finally had Morro dos Cavalos officially recognized, but that recognition is already under threat.Helder Barbalho, Governor of Pará, is a driving force behind many issues linked to COP30. Under his administration, public funds are funneled into symbolic projects like fake metal trees in Belém, while forests are cleared for the Avenida Liberdade highway, which cuts through Indigenous and Quilombola territories. He inherited a political machine built to protect elites and reward exploitation from his father.Barbalho is using the summit to push the lie of his self-proclaimed title of “Green Governor.” In September 2024, during New York Climate Week, he made a $180 million carbon credit deal with the LEAF Coalition, involving Amazon and the Walmart Foundation. Helder claimed Indigenous participation, but 38 organizations from Pará publicly denounced the lack of consultation. The deal, aiming to sell 12 million tons of credits, faces legal challenges for violating Brazilian law and pre-selling carbon without consulting them (source).Barbalho drapes himself in the image of the Amazon while pushing its destruction through agribusiness, mining, logging, and infrastructure. His inherited corruption fuels land grabbing and deforestation. According to his 2022 disclosure, he owns over 6,000 head of cattle valued at about $2.87 million (combining $2.5 million for cattle and $370,000 share in Agropecuária Rio Branco), with total assets near $3.9 million (source).The hypocrisy of politicians like Barbalho, who present themselves as champions of the environment, mirrors what happens on the global stage, just as what Txai Suruí, an Indigenous leader and activist from Brazil experienced during COP16, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held in Cali, Colombia in 2024. While COP16 focused on biodiversity under the Convention on Biological Diversity process, COP30 continues that agenda under a different frame. Both are UN environmental summits addressing overlapping and inseparable issues.At COP16, Txai Suruí was protesting against Marco Temporal, a dangerous, anti-Indigenous legal argument in Brazil that threatens Indigenous land rights by claiming only lands occupied before 1988 should be recognized. All of Brazil is, and always has been Indigenous land. During the protest, she described how a UN security guard grabbed her arm. “She grabbed me by the arm and my hands are painted red, which symbolizes our blood. And she said: you got me dirty. Then she twisted my arm. That’s when I started screaming for help. I was scared, I didn’t expect it.” According to Txai, she and other activists had their badges forcibly removed and they were detained in a COP security room (source). Txai and other protesters complied with demands, but they were still met with violence and detained, having their badges temporarily stripped. This violence and repression illustrate the ongoing struggles Indigenous peoples face, not only politically with attacks like Marco Temporal but also physically, even within international forums that claim to protect biodiversity and the climate.As Indigenous leaders continue to resist the corporate and political forces shaping COP30, their frustration is expressed in clear and uncompromising words. Auricélia Arapiuns, president of COIAB (Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira), stated:“COP30 is as much a farce as the Governor of this state, who is a farce. And it’s a farce that attacks the rights of Indigenous peoples and nature every day.”Her words capture the deep mistrust many Indigenous peoples hold toward a summit that claims to protect the Amazon while allowing continued exploitation.Aílton Krenak, Indigenous leader and philosopher, has criticized the use of the Amazon as symbolic cover for climate inaction. In an interview with Cenarium in February 2025, he stated: “The Amazon cannot be the symbol of COP30. It is the territory where this global event will take place, but it will very likely come at a high social cost. I do not imagine that local communities will receive direct benefits from this event.” He warned that turning the Amazon into a symbol erases the lives, cultures, and resistance of its peoples, substituting deep structural justice with superficial branding. For Krenak, framing the Amazon as a symbol while extractive policies continue is not just cynical. It is a betrayal of the forest’s living communities and ancestral knowledge.Alessandra Korap Munduruku has called COP30 what it is: a violation and a betrayal of land and people. At TEDxAmazônia in Belém, she denounced COP30 and the empty promises behind the summit:“We realize that we, Indigenous peoples, are sick because of mining, because of mercury. Every time we sit with researchers, they say women’s breast milk is contaminated with mercury, women’s wombs are contaminated with mercury. This shouldn’t exist. But what solution will they bring? Will COP bring this solution?”“We know it’s 30 years of COP, but what we see is a COP of business, agreements, parties, festivals, not solving the problems happening in the territory. They are trying to erase us, but we keep fighting, speaking, shouting, so they hear the needs of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola peoples, and traditional peoples. It is our duty to shout, and their obligation to act.” Korap is not just rejecting commodification. She is naming the lie: the Amazon is being used to sell the illusion of climate justice, while the people who have defended it for generations are silenced, sidelined, or sold out.COP30, like its predecessors, must be scrutinized through this lens. Indigenous peoples continue to resist both political and physical violence while fighting to protect their territories and ways of life. You cannot talk about climate justice while threatening the rights of the people who have protected these ecosystems for centuries. You cannot continue to exploit and exclude the Global South while pushing false solutions, deepening debt, and criminalizing resistance."
}
,
{
"title" : "The Real Test for Zohran Mamdani—and the Rest of Us",
"author" : "Collis Browne",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-real-test-for-zohran-mamdani-and-the-rest-of-us",
"date" : "2025-11-06 11:39:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Zohran-bridge-parade.jpg",
"excerpt" : "“We have toppled a political dynasty,” Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City, triumphantly exclaimed during his victory speech late Tuesday night, Nov. 4, in Brooklyn, NY. After a year-long arduous campaign against disgraced former NY governor, Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s win feels historic—because it is. One only needed to feel the energy in NYC on election night to understand the gravity of its importance: a palpable hope, inspiring people across the ideological spectrum and around the world that someone can boldly challenge the corrupt political and economic status quo and win.",
"content" : "“We have toppled a political dynasty,” Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City, triumphantly exclaimed during his victory speech late Tuesday night, Nov. 4, in Brooklyn, NY. After a year-long arduous campaign against disgraced former NY governor, Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s win feels historic—because it is. One only needed to feel the energy in NYC on election night to understand the gravity of its importance: a palpable hope, inspiring people across the ideological spectrum and around the world that someone can boldly challenge the corrupt political and economic status quo and win.But here’s the thing: while Mamdani’s win is certainly encouraging, no one should be surprised by it. The overwhelming majority of the global population is bound by a shared experience of being crushed by corporate capitalism and its stranglehold on governments and the people. So any politician aiming to do literally anything to oppose corruption and economic exploitation already has an advantage. Mamdani’s message was simple, and it spoke to the majority. It was “The Rent is Too Damn High” for a new generation, without the satire, and it worked. (Not to mention, he’s charming.)But now the harder part actually starts: the work that it takes to create change. Not only for Mamdani—but for us, too.The pushback from Republicans and establishment Democrats alike is going to be strong and sustained. And they will come together to sabotage this movement with every tool they have in city hall, in the media, and elsewhere.They will try, like they do with the majority of progressive politicians, to neutralize the threat Mamdani poses to the status quo: first, by sabotaging his efforts to enact his agenda. (We’ve seen this happen with Brandon Johnson, the current mayor of Chicago, who ran on a progressive platform and has received major pushback from establishment politicians.) Second, by sustaining a lengthy war of attrition on Mamdani’s morals against the status quo and corrupt systems, wearing him down into submission. More sinisterly, Republicans may even try to co-opt this message. Conservative businessman and former U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s response to Mamdani’s win was, “We got our a** handed to us; … Our side needs to focus on affordability.”If this forces a broader focus on economic equality, great. But more likely, it could signal a path to hollow out a truly progressive agenda with more lies and lip service.Despite all of these obstacles, Mamdani still has a number of cards that he can play to create change.Immediately, he can make several new appointments and key hires in city government: Deputy Mayors, commissioners of more than 80 departments and agencies like DOT, DOE, NYPD, FDNY, DEP, DSNY; Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) for rent freezes or reductions; City Planning Commission (CPC) which has huge power over housing justice; Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) which regulates rideshare and taxi workers; the Board of Correction (BOC), an oversight body that is crucial to a decarceration agenda; the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) which controls billions in contracts, development projects, and waterfront property; the Workforce Development Board which shapes labor policy, job programs, and union partnerships; and even the Head of the NYC Law Department, who could change the city’s litigation strategies to drop harmful suits, defend protesters, or pursue housing violations.All these major systems can begin to immediately implement a more egalitarian and justice-based progressive agenda. He can also freeze the rent for millions of New Yorkers by appointing supportive members to the Rent Board (provided Eric Adams doesn’t replace all the members with expired terms before his official tenure in December). He can certainly enact the city-run grocery stores, and use the kluge that the Trump administration is using à go-go— the Executive Order—to fast-track some of his policies.But there are three crucial things he can’t do alone and where we, as constituents, cannot take a back seat. He will not be able to get a budget passed in the City Council without citizen pressure on their local borough presidents and city council members. He will also not be able to get a 2% tax hike on the ultra-wealthy passed in Albany or make buses free without Gov. Kathy Hochul’s support. (Hochul, being a notorious establishment Democrat, might give him trouble on this.)Yes, he won, and that is great news. Let’s celebrate it. But this can’t be politics “as usual.” Now, we who pledged our support for these policies must show up and make it clear to the rest of the political system that our demands must be met."
}
,
{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
]
}
