Miko Peled: an insider’s views on the Zionist project

"Only a focused and well co-ordinated strategy to delegitimize and bring down the Zionist regime can bring justice to Palestine. BDS has the best potential for that."

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Miko Peled, an Israeli general’s son and himself a former Israeli soldier, is nowadays a noted peace activist and a tireless worker for justice in the Holy Land. He is considered to be one of the clearest voices calling for support of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against the Zionist regime and for the creation of a single democracy with equal rights on all of historic Palestine.

He will be at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on 23-26 September. I was lucky enough to have the chance to interview him beforehand. In a week that marks the 70th anniversary of the assassination of Folke Bernadotte and the 36th anniversary of the genocidal massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee camp, atrocities committed in pursuit of Zionist ambition, what Miko says may give those who take dictation from the Israel lobby cause to reflect.


SL:  Miko, you were raised in a Zionist family on a Zionist diet. What happened to cause you to break out from there?

MP:  As the title of my memoir The General’s Son suggests, I was born to a father who was a general in the IDF and then, as the sub-title points out, I embarked on a “Journey of an Israeli in Palestine”. The journey defined for me, and through me will hopefully define for he reader, what is “Israel” and what is “Palestine”. It is a journey from the sphere of the privileged oppressor and occupier (Israel) to that of the oppressed (Palestine) and the people who are native to Palestine. I discovered that it is in fact the same country, that Israel is Palestine occupied. But without the journey I would not have figured that out. This for me was the key. It allowed me to see the injustice, the deprivation, the lack of water and rights and so on. The further I allowed, and continue to allow myself to venture into this journey the more I was able to see what Zionism really is, what Israel is, and who I am within that.



SL:  Many months ago you warned that Israel was going to “pull all the stops, they are going to smear, they are going to try anything they can to stop Corbyn”, and the reason anti-Semitism is used is because they have no other argument. This has come true with Jeremy Corbyn under vicious, sustained attack even from former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks. How should Corbyn deal with it and what  counter-measures would you suggest he takes?

MP:  Jeremy Corbyn made it clear during last year’s Labour conference that he will not allow the anti-Semitic accusations to interfere with his work as leader of the Labour Party and as a man dedicated to creating a just society in the UK, and a just world. In that speech he said something that no Western leader would dare to say: “We must end the oppression of the Palestinian people.” He has been right on the money the whole time and his support is growing. I believe he is doing the right thing. I expect he will continue to do so.

SL:  And what do you make of Sacks’ outburst?

MP:  Not surprising that a racist who supports Israel would come out like this – he represents no one.

SL:  The Labour Party’s ruling body, the NEC, has adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism lock, stock and barrel despite warnings from legal experts and a recommendation to include caveats by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. This decision is seen as caving in to outside pressure and obviously impacts on free speech which is enshrined in British law and guaranteed by international convention. How will it affect Labour’s credibility?

MP:  Accepting the IHRA definition was a mistake and I am sure they will live to feel the sting of shame this has placed on those who voted to adopt it. There are at least two notices out already by the Ultra Orthodox Jewish community, which makes up at least 25% to 30% of UK Jews, that they reject the notion that JC is anti-Semitic, they reject Zionism and they reject the IHRA definition.

SL:   Turning to the Occupation, you have said that Israel achieved its aim to make the conquest of the West Bank irreversible 25 years ago. Why do you think the Western Powers still cling to the idea of a Two State Solution?  How do you expect the situation to play out?

MP:  The US, and particularly the current administration, accepts that Israel has swallowed all of Mandatory Palestine and there is no room for non-Jews in that country. They make no claims otherwise. The Europeans  are in a different situation. The politicians in Europe want to appease Israel and accept it as it is. Their constituents, however, demand justice for the Palestinians so, as an act of cowardly compromise the EU countries in true post-colonial fashion treat the Palestinian Authority as though it was a Palestinian state. That is why, I believe, the Europeans are going ahead and “recognizing” the so-called State of Palestine, even though there is no such state. They do it in order to appease their constituents without actually doing anything to further the cause of justice in Palestine. These recognitions have helped not one Palestinian, they have not freed a single prisoner from an Israeli prison, they have not saved a single child from bombings in Gaza, they have not alleviated the suffering and deprivation of Palestinians in the Naqab desert or in the refugee camps. It is an empty, cowardly gesture.

What the Europeans ought to do is adopt BDS. They should recognize that Palestine is occupied, that Palestinians are living under an apartheid regime in their own land, they are victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide and that this must stop, and the Zionist occupation must end completely and without conditions.

I believe the State of Israel will crumble and that we will see a free democratic Palestine from the River to the Sea sooner than most people think. The current reality is unsustainable, two million people in Gaza are not going away, Israel has just announced – again – that two million of its non-Jewish citizens are not welcome to be part of that state, and BDS is hard at work.

SL:  The IDF calls itself the most moral army in the world. You served in the IDF. How credible is its claim?

MP:  It is a lie. There is no such thing as a moral army and the IDF has been engaged in ethnic cleansing, genocide and enforcing an apartheid regime for seven decades. In fact the IDF is one of the best equipped, best trained, best financed and best fed terrorist forces in the world. Even though they have generals and nice uniforms and the most advanced weapons, they are no more than armed gangs of thugs and its main purpose is to terrorise and kill Palestinians. Its officers and soldiers execute with enthusiasm the policies of brutality and ruthlessness which are cruelly inflicted on Palestinians’ everyday life.

SL:  Breaking the Silence is an organisation of IDF veterans committed to exposing the truth about a foreign military trying to control an oppressed civilian population under illegal occupation. They say their aim is to eventually end the occupation. How do you rate their chances of success?

MP: They and other NGOs like them could make a huge difference . Unfortunately they do not go far enough, they do not call on young Israelis to refuse to serve in the IDF, and they do not reject Zionism. Without these two elements I feel their work is superficial and will make little difference.

SL:  Israelis often accuse the Palestinian education system of turning out future terrorists. How does Israel’s education compare?

MP:  The Palestinian education system goes through a thorough vetting process so all claims of it teaching hate are baseless. Israel, however does a fine job in teaching Palestinians that they are occupied and oppressed and have no choice but to resist. They do it using the military, the secret police, the apartheid bureaucracy, the countless permits and prohibitions and restrictions on their lives.

The Israeli courts teach Palestinians that there is no justice for them under the Israeli system and that they are counted as nothing. I have not met Palestinians who express hate, but if some do it is because of the education that Israel is providing, not because of any Palestinian textbook.

Israelis go through a thorough racist education that is well documented in a book by my sister, Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, titled Palestine in Israeli Textbooks.

SL:  Christian communities in the Holy Land have been dwindling fast. The Israelis claim the Muslims are pushing them out but Christians say it’s the cruelty of the occupation that has caused so many to leave. What is your take on this? Are the Israelis trying to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims? Is there a religious war going on to drive the Christians out?

MP:  Christians used to make up 12% of the population in Palestine, now they are barely 2%. There is no one to blame for this other than Israel. Israel destroyed Palestinian Christian communities and churches just like they destroyed Muslims. To Israel Arabs are Arabs and they have no place in the Land of Israel. I strongly recommend the late Bob Simon’s excellent report on CBS 60 Minutes from 2012 titled Christians in the Holy Land. At the end he confronts the former Ambassador of Israel to Washington DC who wanted the show cancelled.

SL:  Would you call yourself a religious person these days? 

MP: I never was.

SL:  You know Gaza. How do you rate Hamas on their potential to govern?  And could honest brokers work with them towards peace?

MP:  I have no way to rate Hamas one way or another. I did speak to people who worked in Gaza for many years, both Palestinians and foreigners, and their assessment was that as far as governing goes, and taking into consideration the severe conditions under which they live, they are to be commended.

SL:   Some people say that the Israeli public are largely unaware of the horrors of the occupation and shielded from the truth. If true, is it beginning to change?

MP:  Israelis are fully aware of the atrocities and they approve. Israelis vote, and they vote in high numbers and for seven decades they keep voting for people who send them and their children to commit these atrocities. The atrocities are committed not by foreign mercenaries but by Israeli boys and girls who for the most part serve proudly. The only thing that changed is the discourse. In the past there was a facade of a civilized discourse within Israel, and today that no longer exists. Saying that Israel must kill more and more Palestinians is a perfectly acceptably statement today. In the past people were somewhat embarrassed to admit they thought that way.

SL:  Israel has carried out a succession of armed assaults in international waters on humanitarian aid boats taking urgent medical and other non-military supplies to the beleaguered people of Gaza. Crew and passengers are routinely beaten up and thrown in jail, and some killed. Should the organizers now give up, or re-double their efforts using different tactics? 

MP:  The Gaza flotillas are certainly commendable but if the goal is to reach the shores of Gaza they are doomed to fail. Their value is only in the fact that they are an expression of solidarity and one has to wonder if the time and effort and risk and expense justify the result. Israel will make sure no one gets through and the world pays them little attention. In my opinion the flotillas are not the best form of action. No single issue in the ongoing tragedy in Palestine can be resolved on its own. Not the siege on Gaza, not the political prisoners, not the water issue and not the racist laws, etc. Only a focused and well co-ordinated strategy to delegitimize and bring down the Zionist regime can bring justice to Palestine. BDS has the best potential for that but it is not being utilized enough and too much time is wasted on arguing its merits.

Certainly one of the weaknesses on the part of those who care to see justice in Palestine is that anyone with an idea just “goes for it.” There is little co-ordination and hardly any strategy to the very crucial question of how to free Palestine. Israel has succeeded in creating a sense of helplessness on this side and in legitimizing itself and Zionism in general, and that is a serious challenge.

SL:  This week was the 70th anniversary of the murder of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte by a Zionist hit-squad while serving as UN Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Everyone is keeping strangely quiet about this, even the Swedes.

MP:  This was one in a series of many political assassinations perpetrated by Zionist terrorists gangs in which no-one was held accountable. The first was in 1924 when they assassinated Yaakov Dehan. Then in 1933 they assassinated Chaim Arlozorov. The 1946 massacre at the King David Hotel was of course politically motivated and caused close to one hundred deaths, most of them innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Then in September 1948 the assassination in Jerusalem of UN intermediary and member of the Swedish royal family, Folke Bernadotte, who apparently came with plans to end the violence in Palestine, plans that the Zionist establishment did not find acceptable. Bernadotte is buried in a humble family grave in Stockholm, there are no memorial services planned that I know of or any mention of this anniversary by any official Swedish organization. My grandfather was Israel’s first ambassador to Sweden. This was shortly after the assassination and he did a fine job making sure that the Swedish government would keep the issue quiet.

There were many, many more assassinations and massacres – the attack on the USS Liberty comes to mind as well as the part played by the brutality of the Zionist apparatus that sees killing as a legitimate tool for accomplishing its political goals. Little is known or recalled about these brutal killings. Countless Palestinian leaders, writers, poets, etc., were assassinated by Israel.

SL:  A lot of hope is pinned on BDS by Palestine solidarity. How effective is BDS and how best can civil society turn up the pressure?

MP:  BDS is a very effective but slow process. It won’t work through magic or Divine intervention. People need to embrace it fully, work hard, demand the expulsion of all Israeli diplomats and total isolation of Israel. There is too much tolerance for those who promote Zionism and promote Israel and the Israeli army and that needs to change. Elected officials need to be forced to accept BDS entirely. The Palestine solidarity groups need to move from solidarity to full resistance, and BDS is the perfect form of resistance available.

SL:  Are there any other key issues that you’re confronting right now?

MP: Moving from solidarity to resistance is, in my opinion key at this point. Using the tools we have, like BDS is crucial. The passing of the Israeli Nation State Law is an opportunity to unite the Palestinian citizens of Israel back with the rest of the Palestinians. We should all strive to bring total unity between the refugees, the West Bank, Gaza and 1948, and demand complete equal rights and the replacing of the Zionist regime that has been terrorizing Palestine for seven decades with a free and democratic Palestine. This opportunity will hopefully be seized.

SL:  Finally, Miko, how are your two books doing – ‘The General’s Son’ and ‘Injustice: The Story of The Holy Land Foundation Five’? It seems to me that the latter, which tells how the justice system in the US has been undermined to benefit pro-Israel interests, ought to be a must-read here in the UK where the same thing is happening in our political and parliamentary institutions and could spread to the courts.

MP:  Well, they are doing fine, though neither one is a best seller yet, and as we are on the less popular side of the issue it is a tough sell. TGS is out in second edition so that is good, and I would certainly like to see it and Injustice in the hands of more people. Sadly though, not enough people realize how the occupation in Palestine is affecting the lives people in the West because of the work of Zionist watchdog groups like the Board of Deputies in the UK, and AIPAC and the ADL in the US.

In this case alone, five innocent men are serving long sentences in federal prison in the US only because they are Palestinians.

SL:  Many thanks, Miko, I appreciate your taking the time to share your views.


Chief among the many positive ideas I get from this encounter with Miko is the need for activists to shift up a gear and accelerate from solidarity to full-on resistance. This will mean wider involvement, better co-ordination, revised targeting and sharper strategy. In effect a BDS Mk2, supercharged and on high octane fuel. Secondly, we ought to treat Zionism and those who promote or support it with far less tolerance. As Miko said on another occasion, “If opposing Israel is anti-Semitism then what do you call supporting a state that has been engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing for seven decades?”

As for Jeremy Corbyn – if he reads this – yes, he’d better come down hard on hatemongers including the real foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semites, but he must also purge the Labour Party of its equally contemptible ‘Zionist Tendency’. And that goes for all our political parties.

© Stuart Littlewood, 21 September 2018

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8 COMMENTS

  1. If this guy was truly the thorn in the side of the zio’s, he would have been “suicided” long ago. They’ve kacked people for a lot less.

  2. The Palestine issue is an Arab issue. Just like world Jewry feels connected to that conflict so does every Arab. People must understand that there have not been any indigenous Jews living in Palestine for over 1,000 years until Yiddish-speaking Zionists began to arrive. The arrival of these people has been the worst tragedy that ever fell on the heads of the Arabs. The Arabs removed the Crusades only to be replaced by another kind of Crusades. We, the Arab people, reject the Jews in Palestine 100% as we had previously rejected the Crusades, the British, the French, the Italians. It also speaks of the arrogance of the Zionists that they arrived to colonize Palestine as other Europeans were giving up colonization and returning home. Iraq, Syria, Libya now lay in ruins as a direct result of these European aliens who invaded Palestine. There will never be peace unless the Arabs get united and use a combined force to dislodge this most deadly enemy from our region but the enemy already planned to break up and weaken the Arab countries so that he faces no threat.

    Please read the ODED YINON plan to break up the Arab countries.

    https://worldpeace365.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east-by-oded-yinon-3/

  3. Mr. Miko Peled wants a democracy in Palestine with equal rights for all. The question then is: who are those who would have equal rights? Does it include the indigenous Palestinians scattered around the world living miserable lives in refugee camps? Does it include the millions of the Ashkenazi Jews who would be highly motivated to get an “Israeli” passport just in time for the new democratic Palestine? Is it not true that if there were a referendum tomorrow for the Palestinians to decide their own fate they would want all foreign people on their land gone just like the Algerians, the Moroccans and the Tunisians did with the French? I am native to the Middle East and I must say it for the 1000th time that the Jews in Palestine – including Peled and his family – are there only by the use of force. European Jewry claims to be the direct descendants of the ancient Israelite but that just sounds so childish, all one has to do is look at the Ashkenazi Jews and they look as alien to our region as the British did in Kenya. Force and only force is what is keeping all the foreign Jews clinging to Palestine.

  4. South Africa vs. Palestine:

    I am not sure what kind of support Americans had for the apartheid regime in South Africa but their support for Jews holding Arab Palestine by force is is huge. American Jews may have been there showing solidarity with the black South Africans but when it comes to Palestine, even the Jews on the left shift to the right because they are not just neutral observers but they have a huge stake in the conflict. Jews lives improved throughout the world as a direct result of their conquest of Palestine. In 2009, the ADL had a survey where it was disclosed that American Jews supported the assault on Gaza in overwhelming numbers, I think it was like 95%. In 2014, Gallup had a survey where they disclosed that 93% of American Jews expressed their solidarity and sympathy for the Jews in Palestine, 5% did not care one way or another and 2% expressed sympathy for the Palestinians. Therefore, 98% of American Jews had no problem with the genocide that was taking place in Gaza in 2014 as long as their own kind were doing the bombing.

  5. Miko Peled is known to say “free Palestine” but a free Palestine
    won’t be free of him and the rest of the millions of Jews who are
    holding that land by force. He is just the kinder and gentler kind of
    Zionist that he does not demand all of Palestine for the Jews, he only
    wants to share the Arabs own land with the Arabs.

  6. With the long history of gross improper and unconscionable conduct by those gangsters in Israel against Palestinians and others around the world it is difficult to believe there must not also be plenty of silenced corruption inside Israel itself too. Note the meaningless “investigation” of Netanyahu and his wife went exactly nowhere and died a silent death as far as the media are concerned. These people running Israel are nothing but common hoodlums, criminals, gangsters, mobsters, modern “Al Capone’s” with a “no rules, just right” hypocritical attitude against anyone who gets in their way. Much stronger international action is required to stop these international thugs before they decide to set off nukes against the world. Israel must be occupied by an international armed force. It borders must be forcibly moved back to the old lines. Unfortunately and eye for an eye is all the understand. The civilian population of Israel has winked at the crimes of its government, aided and abetted them. The time for polite talk is over. The world must get tough with these gangsters in Israel and supporters in the EU, England and the corrupt USA too. Thank you Miko Peled and Stuart Littlewood for having the guts to speak up to tyranny by gangsters in Israel today aided by gangsters in the U.S. and England and EU too.

    • Zionist thugs did 9/11/01. Henry Ford was totally correct about them nearly a century ago in 1921:
      https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
      http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/intern_jew.htm
      THE INTERNATIONAL JEW,
      THE WORLD’S FOREMOST PROBLEM
      Abridged from the original as published by the world renowned industrial leader,
      HENRY FORD, SR.

      Appearing originally in the periodical published by the Ford Motor Co.
      “The Dearborn Independent.”
      https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-4294304-stock-footage–s-the-funeral-of-henry-ford-in.html Look at this very long line of people, on a cold winter day in Detroit in 1947, waiting to say good bye to the single man who did so much to improve their lives. Henry Ford was a genius with little formal education born on a Farm in Michigan in 1863. Pray for more Henry Ford’s to come along and save America from the selfish thieves he sought to expose in his great newspaper the Dearborn Independent.

    • “It borders must be forcibly moved back to the old lines.”

      I am an Arab and you need to tell me what it is that we owe the Jews of Brooklyn, Lithuania, Romania? How are these totally alien people connected to our region. As Herzl was making his rounds in Europe, Christian Europe was elated! Final a Final Solution to the Jewish Question was to use lands of non-whites to remove the whites Jews to – get this – without the consent of the non whites whose land was being discussed for seizure such as Uganda, Mozabique, Argentina, Palestine, Cyprus, Madagascar. The European Jews probably deserved to have their own state but in their native soil of European. All that nonsense of going back to Abraham’s land is just nonsense not to even forget that Abraham was not from Palestine but 1000 miles away from Ur near Basra in Iraq. These people simply arrived to use force and hold the land by force. We resent them we simply wish them GONE!

Comments are closed.