Is Lebanon part of Israel’s ‘Promised Land’?
What about Syria? Jordan? And are sea-front properties in Gaza part of the divine inheritance of God’s Chosen People?
At what point, geographically speaking, is the Zionist vision fulfilled?
For years it was broadly denied that Israel had expansionist ambitions outside of its internationally recognised limits. Israel merely wanted to live safely within its borders, free from terrorism.
People who talked about Israel’s greater territorial ambitions were labelled as anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists: as were those who talked about the Yinon Plan to destabilise and further fracture the Middle East – a clear precursor to the pursuit of ‘Greater Israel’.
It’s true to say that the real nature of a game inevitably gets given away eventually though.
In recent months, as much of the media was distracted by Israel’s actions in Lebanon and Iran, or by the Trump election in the US, more blatant indications of Israel’s real intentions had been on clear display.
Let’s start with Gaza.
At an October event right next to the Gaza border, Israeli extremists, settler groups and government officials were openly forecasting Israeli colonisation of the Gaza Strip.
The plan for post-war Gaza was always Israeli settlements, ‘sea-front properties’ and the expulsion of Palestinians.
Extraordinarily naked statements were made at the event, as reported on by Peter O’Bourne at the time and published in Middle East Eye.
The event took place in a closed military zone and under the watch of armed soldiers. Among those in attendance were senior government ministers and Knesset members, including several from Netanyahu’s party. This included Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
Participants from South Africa, Australia and the US were also reportedly present.
The celebrity-like figure at the heart of the event was the infamous Daniella Weiss – the grandma-like figure famous for her fanatical Zionist ideology and a figurehead of the illegal Settler movement. She said at the time simply, “You will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs disappear from Gaza.”
Regarding the Palestinians, she told journalists at the event journalists that ‘they should go to England, to Africa, to Turkey…’
In fact, Weiss and her push for Israelis to settle immediately in Gaza were recently featured in Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary called ‘Settlers’, which has gotten a lot of traction online (but again, largely ignored by the media).
O’Bourne wrote that Ben Gvir told the audience that Israel would encourage what he called the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens… We will offer them the opportunity to move to other countries because that land belongs to us”.
Note how identical these statements are to what Donald Trump said a few months later in his infamous White House conference with Netanyahu, regarding the displacement of Gazans.
The October event, predictably, was largely unreported. And this was long before the spectacle of ‘Trump Gaza’ reared its head in February this year.
The agenda to force the remaining Palestinians out of Gaza has been evident since the October 7th programme began. We explored the Greater Israel Plan here last October, particularly in relation to calls for Gazans to be ‘temporarily’ pushed into the Egyptian Sinai.
Right-wing Israeli rhetoric suggesting part of Jordan being annexed by Israel was also public knowledge thanks to hugely provocative or indiscreet public statements, which caused a diplomatic spat with the Jordanians.
In March 2023, the spectre of the Greater Israel conspiracy reared its head in a big way when ‘Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich… gave a speech in Paris at a podium featuring a map that included Jordan and the occupied West Bank as part of Israel and said the Palestinian people were “an invention”…’
This implied of course a betrayal of Israel’s treaties and agreements with Jordan. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had to quickly issue a statement saying it was committed to all of its longstanding agreements with the Kingdom of Jordan.
But one doubts that the Jordanians were convinced.
The Greater Israel project, which was once regarded as an ‘antisemitic’ conspiracy theory, is now brazenly on display – because the masks have long since fallen.
In keeping with that theme, The Jerusalem Post was embarrassed a few months ago, just after the initial Israeli incursion into Lebanon, when it published an article claiming that Lebanon is part of Israel’s ‘Promised Land’.
The article, which was timed to provide Biblical justification for Israel’s attacks in the neighbouring country, was very quickly deleted from the Jerusalem Post website when it drew too much attention – but the article has been archived here.
Further to this, the same news outlet published an article in November titled ‘Southern Lebanon is actually northern Israel’.
And again in the Jerusalem Post, a Chabad Rabbi calls for the conquering and settling of Lebanon.
Further proof of a rapidly unfolding expansionist programme.
As if any further evidence were needed of the intention, the collapse of the Syrian government swiftly followed – during which Israel immediately seized the Golan Heights and laid claim to sovereign Syrian territory.
So, having already forecast a full ethnic cleansing and colonisation of Gaza, implied Lebanon as part of the ‘Holy Land’, indiscreetly admitted to wanting part of Jordan, and seizing part of Syria, Israel’s land grabs and expansionist goals have been entirely open.
But largely unchallenged by Western media or international institutions.
As for the actual Biblical dimensions of the Promised Land, the size and extent of Israel’s divine inheritance isn’t apparently fixed, with multiple different scriptural passages suggesting different things.
Exodus 23:31 – 33 provides a probable flavour of how some of the most ardent expansionists might see things though, with the God of Israel saying: “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me…”
That’s how the Bible sees it, apparently.
In more real-world terms, how much territory could in theory be claimed by Israel, and how much underhanded acquisition of other countries’ sovereign land?
Who would stop it? The lack of pushback in post-Assad Syria, for example, is remarkable, given Israeli violations of the country.
But then the new regime in Syria seems to be desperate for cosy relations with Tel-Aviv: possibly at the expense of even ceding Syrian territory.
October 7th really was like a magical cheat code:an all-purpose catalyst that allows all your dreams to come true.
Again, Hamas was little more than than the Israeli extremists’ useful pawn – its means to an end. And October 7th, as has been well established, was the manufactured 9/11 moment they needed as catalyst for preexisting plans.
It’s funny also how often things once dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ end up being proven totally true.
