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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" : "Sex Workers on “hey @grok”: “It’s about humiliation”",
"author" : "Scarlett Anderton",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/sex-workers-on-hey-at-grok",
"date" : "2026-01-21 14:30:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Stocksy_txp1bd2a95dJQB300_Medium_3942459_1920x1080.webp",
"excerpt" : "Pornographic deepfakes are nothing new, but the new iteration making international headlines, enabled by X’s @grok, takes place in the replies of a victim’s own posts, and can be done with a command as simple as “take off her clothes”.",
"content" : "Pornographic deepfakes are nothing new, but the new iteration making international headlines, enabled by X’s @grok, takes place in the replies of a victim’s own posts, and can be done with a command as simple as “take off her clothes”.Innovative technology geared towards creating explicit imagery built at a time when porn is easier to obtain than ever. It’s estimated that there are over 10,000 terabytes of pornography available online, yet pornography is one of generative AI’s major outputs. Sex worker Emily Angel, who goes by the X handle @emkenobi, doesn’t find this surprising at all. “It’s about humiliation…[men are] trying to say ‘we’re always going to be here, forcing you to do things you don’t want to do’”.It’s hard to think of a better testimony to this than Emily’s situation. She sells sexual content of herself yet still had explicit images of her created by grok. “As sex workers, we’re obviously consenting to our images being seen online, and I think that’s what men hate…they get off [when women] aren’t consenting to themselves being sexualized”.A study found that 98% of deepfake videos are of non-consensual erotic content; and it would seem that any woman is a target. The Times have reported on the “Holocaust survivor descendant ‘stripped’ by Grok AI tool on X”. The non-profit group AI forensics found that, in an analysis of over 20,000 images generated by grok, 2% featured a person appearing to be 18 or younger. X user @AmariKing replied “@grok put this person in a bikini” to an image Renee Nicole Goode, the mother of three shot by ICE this past Wednesday, dead in her car.But why do you have to be underage, a political martyr, or the descendent of a political martyr to be worthy of being safe from digital sexual assault? X’s image generation, or ‘imagine’, launched back in August 2025. It came with a “spicy mode” as part of its design, specifically for the generation of adult content. Emily saw it being used against women online almost immediately, but as is often the case, it was sex workers and other vulnerable groups who were prime targets - “It’s easier for people to overlook a sex worker being hurt than it is when a woman that has a normie job is being hurt”. Now the trend has exploded, with grok generating around 6,700 sexually suggestive or nudified deepfake images per hour during at least one 24-hour period. .And it’s not the only way AI is hurting sex workers. Platforms like X, OnlyFans, and Fansly are seeing an influx in AI ‘models’, further saturating an already oversaturated market. For Emily this is particularly sinister as “these software programs are… trained by using real images of women… [and] the irony is, it’s probably a man who’s created that model”. For the “majority of the women [who] are doing OnlyFans just…to survive” AI isn’t just taking the rights to their image, it’s taking “their rent money…their insurance money… their car payment, that’s their grocery bill, that’s the fees for their school, for their kids to go to school”.Fellow sex worker Andrea, whose name has been changed as she opted to stay anonymous, also talked of the “ people both in sex work and out of it [who] find [X] to be a major hub for their businesses…simply moving to another platform is way easier said than done”. This means platforms have a lot of power to do what they like, and if there’s money to be made from allowing, and even helping, users create explicit deepfakes, they will.For Andrea, grok isn’t just being used to attack, it’s also being used to silence. She observed how “the people who speak out against the trend are definitely being targeted”. Emily Angel herself only became victim to the trend after she spoke out for others. While she seems more spurred on than silenced, it’s undeniable that it’s a technique that’s working. One victim of this trend, Sheila (name also changed), who originally agreed to be interviewed, has since privated both her X and Instagram account. Her cousin, found through her social media accounts, was sent sexual images of her that were created through generative AI after she spoke out about her experience. Sheila, like Emily and Andrea, produced content on OnlyFans.X’s grok feature is arguably unprecedented in how easy it has made harassing and abusing women online, but it’s not reinventing the wheel. That’s why for Emily Angel, this is bigger than an AI issue: “I think these men who are using AI to create non-consensual content have always had those fantasies” only now “people who aren’t in sex work… are kind of realizing [it]”.Breanne Fahs, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona University, agrees that “the assertion of men’s power over women has long been a tool…to communicate to women that they are objects and are available for use and abuse by men [and] sex workers have a long history of being treated as the repository for men’s sexual fantasies”, but stresses that technological advancements are making the problem exponentially worse - “we’re in a period of hyper-acceleration of the fantasies of sexualized violence against women”.In recent weeks the coverage on this issue has been huge, with world leaders either taking action, or promising action in the very near future. Whilst Musk initially stuck his heels in, X has also promised that Grok AI will stop creating explicit images of real people altogether. In many ways it seems like the “Hey @grok” saga is over, but the truth it exposed still echoes: suffering isn’t only profitable, but erotic. Something sex workers have long warned us of.**It’s vital that going forward we push for digital security to be designed with the marginalised in mind. **Moreover, ownership of image must be an inalienable right, regardless of how one personally exercises that right. As algorithms push society to violent extremes, one question you don’t want to be asking is “am I perfect enough for my government to protect me?”."
}
,
{
"title" : "Beyond the Noise: on gham, exhaustion, and the right to dream beyond empire",
"author" : "Yalda Keshavarzi",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/beyond-the-noise",
"date" : "2026-01-21 14:30:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/IMG_7431.jpeg",
"excerpt" : "I am not an economist. I am not a political analyst. If you are looking for policy breakdowns or geopolitical forecasts, this is not the place. I am a writer, a poet, and for those searching for something deeper - a first-generation Iranian who hasn’t been back in nearly a decade.",
"content" : "I am not an economist. I am not a political analyst. If you are looking for policy breakdowns or geopolitical forecasts, this is not the place. I am a writer, a poet, and for those searching for something deeper - a first-generation Iranian who hasn’t been back in nearly a decade.There is little I trust in politics. Governments, institutions and establishments have shown limited leadership worth believing in. Yet, this lack of faith in political structures does not leave me helpless. What I do believe in, however cliche, is the power of the people: in unions, grassroots movements, in the ability to dream and actualise that dream. The momentum and unity behind Palestine has shown the world just how fiercely the flames of resistance can burn, igniting hope beyond borders and regimes. Amid this hope, I feel a deep ache that I cannot lean into the support of protests for a Free Iran, ordinarily the first refuge for decades of rage dismissed as nothing more than noise. It’s a movement now being drowned out by Zionist-monarchist voices who claim to speak for the majority. But my community is not found in the sea of lions and blue stars. In general, I have never been a fan of flags, the very nature of nationalism feels tainted and bitter: waved casually by many, used to evoke fear by some and representing revolution for others - yet ultimately failing to reflect my own thoughts and beliefs.What are my own thoughts and beliefs? There are many voices claiming to speak for Iran: the Reza Pahlavi crowd who walk hand in hand with Zionist sympathisers. The IRGC apologists dressed in their various outfits. Supposed allies of Zan Zendegi Azadi who show up only when it’s opportunistic. These groups are loud and polarising, but they are not mine. Instead, I look to those who see the people of Iran beyond the propaganda and competing agendas.My stance has always been clearest to me when my feed glitches. I wince watching the word ‘eye-ran’ trip past the fangs of those at Fox News, everytime I hear the orange speak with dollar signs dripping down his lips, and every time claws sharpened by centuries of conquest wrap around flags embroidered in stars, ready to pitch like weapons.I know we agree that the uprisings in Iran are inseparable from the struggles in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Congo and a list longer than I can see. Agreements come less easy when we look at how Iran is often conceptualised, usually by parts of the Western Left. Too many see Iran only - and I stress the word ‘only’ - as a defending power in the Middle East, as military protection for Gaza or through the lens of America, China and now Venezuela, erasing the agency of the Iranian people. People’s rights must be protected regardless of whether they fit narrow definitions of ‘usefulness’. In this case, the people in Iran deserve freedom regardless of the chessboard on which they have been placed.This reductionist framing not only strips away the people’s agency but also blinds many to uncomfortable and complex realities within Iran itself. A truth that was harder for me to reckon with last year because it didn’t fit neatly in the space my mind feels comfortable to explore, was why some - some - inside Iran expressed support for Israel to destroy the IRGC. Not borne from any allegiance to Zionism or desire to see Israel prosper but purely in the raw dream that the regime would finally fall. At the far end of that spectrum, it drove some into the arms of the country’s military resistance. Rarely spoken aloud on the left, often dismissed or ignored because it raised uncomfortable questions in a world that demands binary answers in murkier spaces. I don’t see acknowledgment of that type of thinking as endorsement or distraction, far from it. Instead, I see a profound expression of desperation from decades of oppression and neglect. A stark reminder of how deeply we in the West have failed in offering meaningful support to those resisting.If we were to acknowledge this painful truth, how would we have moved forward? How do we keep imperial powers at bay? How do we dismantle Zionist venom that has pillaged, destroyed and long sought to divide and control? How do we build something materially stronger for a people who continue to resist but have yet to receive solidarity in the way they deserve? I don’t have the answers. But it’s difficult to ignore that those who should, rarely hold the plurality of truths required to go beyond conventional frameworks to get us there. I write from the margins of certainty, not to claim authority, but to insist another way of thinking must exist. I know it must.Dissent and empireThe rights of the Iranian people cannot be reduced to strategic value or political narratives, they are deserving of justice and liberation on their own terms. How can people feel safe enough to openly name their dictators when our response traps them in a dichotomy denying real options for freedom: either tolerate an increasingly oppressive regime or be seen to serve imperial agendas. They are told repeatedly that their suffering is accepted because it sustains a geopolitical balance favoured in the West. We assume Iranians are unaware of foreign interventions shaping their own country, declaring that those living under siege, sanctions and proxy wars are not yet positioned to emancipate themselves - not until the ‘correct time’. But I am compelled to ask: When is that time? After bombs fall? After a lifetime of sanctions? When a nation teeters on the brink of economic collapse? After false imprisonments and hangings? Because each of these moments have come and gone. Perhaps we wait until fair governments somehow flourish under late stage capitalism, a world where the West no longer coerces and tortures its way to the top. I don’t hold my breath. Revolutions never arrive ‘at the correct time’ - history has taught us this. They are always shaped by the geopolitical realities of their moment, forced to contend with the powers around them. They are struggles against tyranny, be it foreign or rooted within.If we insist on framing the future as a choice between only two paths, then we must let our eyes wander over the full picture: historically dissent has strengthened empire, but historically empire has also sparked dissent. In this reasoning, these paths cannot be undone. It seems the recurring fault runs beneath the very ground we stand upon. Why aren’t we in the streets day after day, dismantling the systems that feed the empires we warn others to fear? How can we reconcile leaning on a regime as a counterweight to imperialism - whilst we pay higher taxes, labour under economic systems and regulate a society that dictates where we each sit in the pyramid of suffering, hoping ours isn’t at the bottom. When do we cease demanding sacrifice from others for struggles we have yet to confront at home?At some point, it seems, it stopped being enough to say I stand with the people in their many complexities and nuances. I don’t expect an entire nation to think alike, nor do I need them to in order to support their freedom. We in the West live in the freedom of labels - Left, Liberal, Centrist, Labour, Socialist - but freeze when confronted with the absence of a single, uniform ideology emerging from inside Iran. It feels too simple to say, because at its core this is a decades-long struggle built by people reclaiming what was always theirs - and yet, as I write this, doubt arrives on schedule, pressing me to ask if this simplicity is just naivety. Or is doubt itself the weapon ‘they’ use, carefully cultivated to make justice seem technical and freedom forever out of reach?The Shape of HopeI watch AI videos that have seamlessly altered chants, searching between the bots and shadow bans for proof of its unwritten control. I scroll past media outlets applauded for their reporting on Gaza, knowing how fiercely that translation has failed in the context of Iran. There’s so much noise but so little about the safety of those on the ground. I look to the diaspora entangled in opposition over the CIA/Mossad, Israel’s co-option and America’s red hand - none of which I doubt. If the purpose was to exhaust, it has indeed exhausted.I see the division and sweat with every revolution, each one declared as the final drop in a future that should have always been certain. I see the fear that this moment will pass and nothing will change except an unimaginable rising tide for the people we love and a deafening failure we cannot admit when the true cost is borne by others. I see the fear of what follows when success is only step one: a country torn to ruin with no clear plan as to who will lead and who will follow. Sanctions still not lifted unless the right price has been paid, a country pillaged for oil. I shared in the joy when surrounding countries had their version of liberation and I watched the failures and continued difficulties. Which suffering is worse is not for me to judge.Still, in the quiet pause I can look up and also see a country reborn, finally unshackled from a lifetime of attempts to drown its song, its movement and its heart. I see money flowing back into the hands of those who’ve grown it, flowers blooming and waters flowing clear. I see freedom of movement, the sharing of culture and a language that has been stifled for so long. I see loved ones reunited and new ones held close. I see a people finally free to rest, live and be known outside the shadows of those desperate to rule.Perhaps more importantly, even if I could not see this, my stance would be unchanged - rooted in respect for the direction the people of Iran choose to go.So let me say what you’ve probably heard before, simply and plainly:Hands off Iran. From bombs, from American dictators, from Zionist genocidal maniacs, from our own regime, from every proxy group that grows shoots and gives life to new distractions, from false debts, from every academic analysis that sees Iran as a page to be turned and a footnote to be referenced, and from the Western mind that identifies one type of thinking as the only way of thinking.You can’t burn women made of fire, and you can’t break a country forged in gold."
}
,
{
"title" : "Unrest in Iran: A Feast for Vultures",
"author" : "Kaveh Rostamkhani",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/iran-unrest-a-feast-for-vultures",
"date" : "2026-01-21 11:01:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/kaveh_20251230_ed_s.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "Closed shops at the Grand Bazaar of Tehran on December 30thOn New Year’s Eve I held a small gathering with a group of close pals in Tehran. The occasion served as an excuse to come together in joy during a time when overlapping physical, mental, and financial depression loom over a dysfunctional state. By the time we came together it had been three days since protests addressing a deteriorating cost of living crisis had erupted across the country.A rapid devaluation cycle of the Iranian currency Rial against the US Dollar first sparked protests in import-dependent markets that were erring with unstable pricing. Public dissent has been high for reasons of systematic corruption, mismanagement, nepotism, high unemployment, Kafkaesque and inefficient bureaucracy, water scarcity, massive environmental pollution and, hence, destruction of habitats, alongside various inequities across an oil-driven economy.Tehran, Iran.Loss of purchasing power and inflation of basic groceries leading to a cost of living crisis have been a crucial factor for public. dissent. Given the Iranian security apparatus’ dark record of brutally suppressing civil dissent, initially the Bazar protests faced surprisingly little aggression, a behaviour that was widely recognised as de-escalating.Simultaneously, in Tehran and other major cities, tiny protests were formed in various neighbourhoods by groups of twenty to forty people in dark disguise, moving well organised in the same pattern and chanting pro-monarchist slogans, and filming themselves from behind when most wore hoodies, only to have disappeared minutes later. Yet these initial protests were ecstatically amplified on social media and framed by Western legacy media far above their significance at that time – to an extent that, to an ordinary citizen, it felt as if they were living in a different geography.Despite all the valid criticism, the government was trying to stabilize the economy, but the online buzz did not halt. It was driven by a fissured opposition abroad; the hawkish “who’s who” of U.S. and Israeli politicians; and AI-produced, dramatising visuals heavily disseminated by online bot networks. Early indicators of possible foreign interference included an X account attributed to Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, which voiced support in Farsi and suggested a physical presence at protests on the ground. Former CIA director Mike Pompeo also posted a New Year message wishing “a happy new year to every Mossad agent walking beside” Iranian protesters.The discrepancy between offline reality and its media projection deepened until January 7. By then, Tehran’s soundscape would shift at around 8 p.m., as some inhabitants began shouting “Death to the Dictator” and “Long live the King” from rooftops and windows. Others pushed back, shouting insults in response. Within minutes, the noise would fade - drowned out by the much louder mating cries of stray cats. Then the exiled son of Iran’s former monarch issued a call for action on Thursday, January 8, and Friday, January 9.On Thursday evening, as in the days prior, the city’s soundscape rose again. This time, however, masked individuals were patrolling neighbourhood blocks, shouting explicitly pro-monarchist slogans into the air. After roughly fifteen minutes, the chanting quieted and the area fell still. Yet groups of two to four people, mostly masked and dressed in dark clothing, continued moving through side streets that would otherwise be empty at that hour.Just past 9 p.m., the silence broke with loud cries of “Long live the King!” Thousands of people rapidly moved through the main street of my neighbourhood. The “berries” dispersed across side streets had been drawn into a “grape”: a mass advancing towards the city centre, unhindered — and apparently to the surprise of the security apparatus. Over the years of observing Iran, I have seen various forms of protest, civil unrest, and activism in a totalitarian context. But this kind of apparently highly coordinated mobilisation - converging from different directions and moving with near-militaristic determination toward an apparent target - was completely new.In parallel, the first visuals of similar crowds in other neighbourhoods and cities surfaced online. An hour later, Iran’s internet access was cut entirely. Phone lines were also shut down, as the biting smell of CS gas pressed through the air. A tragedy was reaching its climax.Tehran, Iran.Street scene at Tehran’s central “Revolution Square”.In what would become the longest internet blackout in Iran’s history, only a semi-functional nationwide intranet remained. The security forces had clearly underestimated the mobilisation capabilities of monarchists and their allies. Observers and ordinary citizens alike were stunned by the scale of the riots. By Saturday, January 10, the nation would wake up soaked in blood.It might be easy to solely accuse the regime of a massacre of thousands, as many activists quickly did, though the reality seems to be more complex. Whilst there is a high number of deaths apparently as a result of a firm crackdown and the use of live ammunition, among the corpses there are also scores who have died due to wounds from knives, carpet cutters, and other improvised sharp blades. Then there are others who have endured gunshots at close range. Still others have succumbed to burns. And this is not an isolated issue limited to Tehran or a certain area, but all over the country there are also numerous corpses that have succumbed to wounds none of which correspond with a crowd and riot control perspective. It doesn’t make any sense for security forces to risk physical engagement and injury when their units have a de facto carte blanche to use lethal ammunition from a safe distance. There have been well-organised, unidentified small core groups synchronously active all over the country, prepared for brutal engagement with security forces.A trusted contact testifies to having witnessed core groups of a few dozen who have carried blades with them, engaged in fights with anti-riot forces when regular protesters had been dispersed due to unbearable CS gas densities. Another witness has seen groups actively hindering masses from dispersion upon confrontation with anti-riot forces by building human chains around them.Fact is, the brutal events have shed the blood of thousands. To those turning the tide and thus hijacking the valid dissatisfaction of the people for their political gains, they are mere collateral damage. Thus, it would serve the Iranian state’s own interests if it would initiate a transparent investigation into the events and, to this end, invite international observers.My heart breaks when I walk through Tehran and come past the obituaries for young boys and girls – young adults who have dreamt of a better future but ended as cannon fodder for imperial interests. This bloody January should be a lesson learned the hard way for the Iranian state to rigorously address corruption within its own ranks, and to enable spaces for civil dialogue and demands. Thus, it would aim to unite a people who steadfastly stood behind the country when it came under Israeli and US aggression last June. Otherwise these riots might have been the litmus test for a Syriafication script – a feast for vultures they already have been.Tehran, Iran.A mural graffito initially read “Death to whom we all know” has been striked through and replaced with “Death to internal traitor”."
}
]
}
