Just as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was translated and disseminated throughout the Middle East, so Oded Yinon’s article was translated and edited by Israel Shahak, the kind of Jew even former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke loved, and it was published by the Association of Arab American University Graduates. It is called “A Zionist Plan for the Middle East,” and is lovingly summarized in a publisher’s note, “Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed, unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy for the Middle East.” It identifies the theory as stating that to survive, Israel must become an imperial power, dissolve the Muslim states and create fragmented entities that fight among themselves before being united in an Israeli empire. The publisher claims that the Lebanon War in the 80s was intended to break Lebanon apart into smaller regions, even though the Israeli government called for a strong central government in Lebanon. The publisher then backtracks and says the Israelis actually wanted a strong central government in Lebanon with which they could sign a peace treaty and control more effectively. Like many conspiracy theories, the Yinon Plan libel considers an alternative that seems to go against the grain of the main strategy, but is not considered contradictory if it is another way of achieving the same pre-supposed goal. The publisher then states that the Lebanon War in the 1980s proved that the Israelis were not satisfied with displacing Palestinians, but wanted to destabilize the entire Middle East.
The conspiracy theory implies the question of whether these states are easier to control if fragmented. With the example of ISIS, it seems the splinter groups are more difficult to control, since they are not centralized, political entities whose participants can be tracked. What made the second Palestinian intifada (2000) so terrifying and destructive for Israelis and difficult to contain was the randomness of the Arab attacks, the fact that one of several groups could claim responsibility, and that some terrorists could have acted alone on their own initiative. As shown by ISIS, fragmentation can inspire more terror, expand influence and have certain strategic advantages over centralization of power. Israel’s wanting to destabilize the Middle East makes little sense if what results is an ISIS, a multi-headed snake that can bite the horse’s heel.
The Association of Arab American University Graduates’ version of the Oded Yinon article is translated and edited by Israel Shahak who was an Israeli holocaust survivor, born in Poland, who published statements often regarded as anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Shahak was liberated from Bergen Belsen, emigrated to Israel, served in the IDF and became a professor of chemistry at Hebrew University. He was disenchanted with David Ben Gurion’s statement during the 1956 Suez war that the fight was “for the kingdom of David and Solomon.” He became a strident critic of traditional Judaism and started “The Israeli League Against Religious Coercion.” In addition, he wrote and published articles around the world with titles such as “Torture in Israel” and “Collective Punishment in the West Bank.” For his articles, he won praise from Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky. Shahak wrote of an Israeli desire to dominate the world and to spread vice to weaken the masses by “encouraging drug addiction and thus creating political apathy.” He was involved with the Israeli Communist Party and wrote, “If the Israeli Jewish masses are not split from Zionism… then there will be another Holocaust, the Arab revolution is going to win. If the masses of Israeli Jews are not incorporated in it, they will necessarily be consumed by it.” Shahak was published by an English language PLO publication and called Israelis “Holocaust mongers” who were going through a “Nazification.” He also said the Nuremberg laws were milder than Biblical injunctions about mingling with gentiles. Even the left-leaning journal Haaretz has written that there was plenty of evidence of treason against Shahak. Then Dean of Tel Aviv University Law School, Amnon Rubenstein, said that Shahak “does not even support those who want a simple war against Israel, but rather those who want an annihilation of its people.” Former Klansman David Duke sang Shahak’s praises as someone who wanted to bring “decent humanity to Judaism and the Zionist state” and credited him with unveiling “hateful Judaic laws … that permit Jews to cheat, to steal, to rob, to kill, to rape, to lie, even to enslave Christians.” Israel Shahak died in 2001 of complications related to diabetes.