By Jamal Kanj

On a Thursday night 12 November, terrorists blew themselves up on the streets of Beirut. The next day, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Paris. Perpetrators belonging to the same group targeted Muslims and Christians in the Lebanese and French capitals.

Just a month ago, there was the moving scene of European women and men holding signs welcoming refugees arriving at train stations.

Thus, the horrific attacks in Paris would be even more appalling if there is any truth to the news that some of the terrorists had disguised themselves as refugees in order to reach France, especially since the refugees had found better reception in Europe than anywhere else, including many of the Arab and Muslim countries. For these terrorists to exploit that hospitality is neither an Arab or Muslim value.

There could be no justification for the terrorist attacks in Paris or the atrocious murders in Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus or Nigeria. Putting aside our virtuous indignation, however, we mustn’t forget that the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) was the illegitimate child of George Bush’s “birth pangs of democracy” in the Middle East. The misguided, US-led Western interventionist policies created the environment that gave birth to the refugees and the terrorists – a programme designed for Israel by Zionist neoconservative appointees in the dens of the US State Department and the Pentagon.

Lasting conflicts and fragmentations in the Arab world were envisioned more than 30 years ago by former Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon. In a 1982 treatise, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, published in Kivunim (Directions), the official journal of the World Zionist Organisation, Yinon argued that the future priorities for the “Jewish state” (JS) are “The dissolution of Syria and Iraq… into ethnically or religiously unique areas.” Almost 30 years earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett proposed the same for Lebanon.

IS and JS have a shared strategy: perpetual conflict between Islam and the West is critical for their survival.

IS gets its oxygen from the US’s and other Western powers’ unconditional diplomatic and financial support for JS. IS’s ideology flourishes on Western pandering to JS as an exceptionalist state beyond reproach, defying UN resolutions with complete impunity. Following Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington, Israel is in line to be rewarded, again, for its intransigence and attempts to derail the nuclear deal between the West and Iran.

The Israeli-planned and Western-executed “dissolution of Syria and Iraq”, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya into ethnic or religious entities has created fertile grounds for dissent, offering Islamist demagogues the perfect recipe to manipulate feeble minded individuals to rally around IS, believing they were avenging their religion.

Alas, all of this was already predictable, a known consequence and anticipated outcome of actions by US intelligence agencies.

In August 2002, CIA analysts authored a study, “The perfect storm: Planning for the negative consequences of invading Iraq”. It predicted the breakup of Iraq, regional instability and a surge in global terrorism.

In a pre-war briefing, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was presented with two intelligence assessments warning that the Iraq invasion would lead to anarchy and an increase in terrorism. In January 2003 the National Intelligence Council think-tank issued an assessment forecasting that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the ranks of Islamic extremists.

Despite the red flags, the Bush administration opted to heed the advice of Israeli advocates, ideologues who were trained at the offices of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli think-tanks in Washington. After Bush’s election, large donors of the Republican Party recommended them for key policy-making positions in the Pentagon and the State Department.

The Zionist neoconservatives redirected the war compass from Al Qaeda to fight Israel’s wars. According to a Bush administration insider’s book, during a policy discussion Israel firster Paul Wolfowitz argued: “We don’t have to deal with Al Qaeda… We have to talk about” Iraq.

Just one day before the Iraq invasion, US Vice-President Dick Cheney delivered a speech, which was likely prepared, or at least proofed, by Zionist neoconservative and White House Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, in which Cheney foolishly claimed: “We will… be greeted as liberators” in Iraq.

Today it’s not enough to mourn Paris’s or Beirut’s victims. We must also remember the estimated 1.3 million people who were banished directly and indirectly by the deviated “war on terrorism”. For the Zionist neoconservatives’ conceived war has offered more than 1.3m reasons to recruit terrorists.

A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Digital News. The version here is published by permission of Jamal Kanj.