Not many people in Israel know the political researcher specializing in the Middle East, Dr. Michael Duran. Those who are exposed to his essays, mainly on Iran and the Obama administration, Iran and the Biden administration - and all of this in relation to Russia and Israel - know that his writings, based on thorough research, have a degree of credibility which does not exist in the commentary columns, and is sometimes missing in the research books as well.
Duran recently provided analyzes and assessments on the maritime border agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, an agreement that the Lebanese cynically call the Hochstein Agreements, as a counter to the Abraham Agreements.
Duran sees the naval agreement as a proven revelation of the Obama-Biden doctrine to "integrate Iran in the Middle East."
That is, recognition of the trends of Iranian hegemony and encouragement while throwing Israel under the wheels of the bus.
Duran's book, "The Suez Junction", which was published in the USA more than five years ago, takes us back to the 1950s, when the American foreign relations establishment, which includes the Mahmad, the National Security Council and the CIA, bet big on the dictator The Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser.
This period, which began in 1951 approximately with Churchill's return to power in England, is seen in Israel as a period of Republican rule very hostile to Israel led by President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dallas.
But Duran proves that at a certain point, after the great damage of Nasserism was done, there was a revolutionary turn in Eisenhower's approach.
It took place after Operation Kadesh in 1958, and he comes to the subject in the last part of the book.
It begins with the main mistake of the American establishment regarding the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In an ideal world, Dallas thought, the United States would side with the Arabs. But here the ethos of the foreign establishment is joined by the anti-Semitic element, for which it is usually difficult to find smoking guns. And here, in a debate held at the National Security Council, Dallas said that "the State of Israel is actually the darling of Judaism in all The world, and world Jewry is indeed a formidable force... When the State of Israel was established, both the State Department and the Defense Department agreed that its foundation, under the circumstances, would inevitably lead to the situation we now face in the Near East.
"Nevertheless, the warnings and advice of the Ministry of Defense and the Department of Defense were ignored.
The best proof of the strength of international Jewry is that the USSR, although it constantly hints to the Arab countries that it will agree to help the Arabs dismantle Israel, has never publicly come out with such a statement of support."
The Russians could win the big prize, according to Dallas, if they supported the destruction of Israel.
"There is no greater danger to US security," Dallas said of the Arab conflict.
However, Duran shows in his book that the inter-Arab conflict, Nasser's efforts to take control of the pro-Western Arab states by means of violent coups, was the main driver of the instability in the region in the first decade of the Cold War.
Two major events in Israel happened against the background of this period: "Esek HaBish" and Operation Kadesh.
The perception of the American establishment was that it was necessary to disassociate from Great Britain, to distinguish the United States from what was still perceived as "British imperialism" and from Zionism, and to support the "progressive" forces, the rising forces since the July 23, 1952 coup of the "Free Officers".
Optimism also reigned in Israeli intelligence with the rise of the "free officers", when General Muhammad Nagib serves as a puppet ruler, and Colonel Nasser, who was known to Legal Alon and Yeruham Cohen, is the real power in the junta.
The focus of the Middle Eastern plot was the Suez Canal.
The British struggled to hold on to it, and Nasser strived to nationalize it.
Those who read Duran's words cannot help but think of the leaders of AMN in Israel 20 years later, who probably forgot the importance of the canal in the ethos of Egyptian communism. In fact, Nasser's declaration of nationalization in the summer of 1956 was the declaration of Egyptian independence for all intents and purposes. From here the road to the tripartite alliance was short. Great Britain-France-Israel.
The familiar absurdity of Middle Eastern history is that despite the defeat of Nasser's army in the Sinai, the Americans under the leadership of Eisenhower gave him his greatest victory: a British and French defeat that put an apparent end to the era of colonialism, and the withdrawal of the IDF from the Sinai five months after the operation that launched the Third Kingdom of Israel (The King's Speech (Ben-Gurion). Duran says that the name "Yotebat", given to the island of Tiran, aroused disgust and reluctance in Eisenhower. Since there are problems with the translation into Hebrew, this requires examination.
Nasser headed the bloc of non-aligned countries that were actually part of the Soviet bloc.
Duran argues convincingly that Israel was less important to him than the pan-Arab takeover of the Arab world.
The West was perceived by him in the form of the "Baghdad Alliance" centered on Iraq and Turkey, and he strove to tattoo it.
Eisenhower adopted the British position of 1956 following the events of 1958: in Iraq, a coup took place along the lines of the Free Officers led by Abdel-Karim Kassem;
The entire branch of the Hashemite monarchy and the other leaders were slaughtered.
Egypt and Syria formed a political unity called KAM, and unlike the American leaderships of today - Eisenhower and even Dallas regretted their previous anti-British and anti-Israel policies.
The slogan was that what is worse than doing something and failing, is doing nothing;
Eisenhower claimed that "there is no reason to recognize Nasser as the head of the Arab national movement... If we do so, Nasser will become the greatest extortionist this country has ever faced."
That is why the US sends Marines to Lebanon, and the British enter Jordan. Here Duran reveals an event that is unknown, or known and not discussed. The Russians sent an ultimatum to Israel to close its airspace, so as not to allow British and American planes to pass through its skies on their way to Jordan and Lebanon. And Ben-Gurion The strong, bold one surrenders and closes the sky, but a short campaign of persuasion by the Americans makes him withdraw from the move.
All these moves echo later historical events such as the cooperation between Israel, the US and Jordan in September 1970, when Israel provided a protective screen for King Hussein while he was slaughtering Palestinian terrorists.
The attitude of the USA towards Israel following the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War shows, according to Duran, that the Americans internalized our place as an asset in the Cold War. An interesting point is the conceptual and ideological return of the Democrats' foreign establishment to the world of the 1950s, in the form of the attitude that Biden and before him Obama give To the representatives of the new anti-imperialist hegemony, the Ayatollahs of Iran.
Suez Junction, Michael Duran, Shibulat Publishing, 271 p.
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