Afrasianet - Dr. Abdullah Maarouf - In our childhood, we whispered among ourselves a misconception that was widespread in many Arab societies, according to which the Israeli Knesset (parliament) had a large plaque in the middle of it, saying: "Your borders, O Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile," and that there is an idea in the minds of Israelis that the Promised Land extends between the Euphrates River and the Nile River. Yasser Arafat even once pointed out to the media that the map of "Greater Israel" is on the Israeli tenth agorat coin (which is equal to ten shekel).

Then we grew up and learned that there is no such painting in the Israeli Knesset, and the Israeli media insisted on treating Yasser Arafat's words about the ten agora currency with ridicule, considering that the image of that coin represents the image of a corroded coin from the era of the Kingdom of Judah as a symbol of the historical Jewish presence in Palestine only.

I remember during the wave of signing the Oslo and Wadi Araba Accords that some enthusiasts of the idea of peace with Israel were ridiculing in the media of some Arab countries those stories spread about Greater Israel, and the idea that Israel wants to expand in the first place, and asserting that this idea is completely untrue, and that Israel does not want more than the lands it acquired in 1948 only (not even the West Bank and Gaza), and that we wronged Israel by accusing it of coveting the surrounding Arab countries, and that The idea of "Greater Israel" was nothing more than a libel that our people slandered against Israel, to other waves of self-flagellation in the midst of that period full of dreams of peace, the solution of the Palestinian cause, and so on.

Religious Zionism today believes in the state of Sharia, religious prophecies, Torah and Talmud texts, and does not see in politics or regional changes anything that might limit its ambitions to establish a Greater Israel

With time, dreams of peace collapsed under the scandals of the polluted water that Israel sent to Jordan in 1998, and that gentle image of Israel, which some sought to convince the Arab peoples of, collapsed under the weight of the occupation tanks and planes that bombed Palestinian cities during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Things began to take a different turn when the war raged in Lebanon in 2006, and then four times in the Gaza Strip, the fifth of which we are living today, and the brutality of the Israeli regime was revealed, which bombed civilians with white phosphorus, which is internationally banned and did not hesitate to deal with unarmed civilians with the utmost brutality and burn them alive.

However, all this did not help some of the pretenders of prudence and wisdom, who found Israel an excuse every time under the pretext that it was the Palestinian or Lebanese resistance that should be blamed for "provoking" Israel and "pushing" it to respond violently, as if the blame of the victim had been repeated by some over the past years until today.

All this has changed now in light of the grinding war declared by Israel on the seventh of October last year during the Al-Aqsa flood operation, and although the same voices came out blaming the victim as usual, something has changed in Israel this time.

This is the first war to be fought under the rule of the Kahanist religious Zionist movement, which does not believe in the other in the first place, does not believe in the idea of peace or anything else with regard to the Arabs, but believes in complete elimination and total annihilation.

This is what Rabbi Meir Kahane, the spiritual father of this movement, was screaming at before his assassination in New York in 1990.

The current that controls Israel and seeks to establish itself in Israel and completely reformulate the state according to its religious vision believes in the state of Sharia, religious prophecies, Torah and Talmud texts, and does not believe in political games, regional changes, or others. It is a religious current that sees itself as the executor of God's commands contained in the Torah and Talmud only.

It is strange that the rise of this current and its profound impact on the continuation and expansion of this war was accompanied by the re-emergence of the idea of "Greater Israel" once again, an idea that the currents of peace, whether in Israel or in the Arab countries, sought to convince the peoples that it is a false idea that does not exist in the Israeli mentality or the Zionist mentality in general.

However, the religious Zionist current came to reveal the hidden and return this issue strongly to the forefront, through direct statements made by a number of leaders of this current more than once, to reveal that what we were told in the past was a lie is nothing but the truth indeed!

In a documentary produced by the Turkish network TRT World entitled "The Holy Salvation", Daniela Weiss, one of the most senior leaders of this movement and specializes in planning and inciting settlement in the West Bank and recruiting militias of the so-called "hilltop boys" from extremist settler extremists in the West Bank, says: "The borders of the Jewish state are the borders that God promised Abraham: from the Euphrates to the Nile."

When asked in the interview whether these borders include territories from other countries, she said, "Of course, they include territories from other countries, but we have our Bible, which is the only document we need." She refers here to a verse from Genesis (15:18) in the Torah, in which the Lord mentions a promise to Abraham: "To your offspring I will give this land, from the river Egypt to the great river Euphrates," and she and her followers decide that what is meant by the descendants of Abraham mentioned in this religious text are the children of Israel. Or the Jews today.

The idea of a greater Israel has never been a fantasy, but a real vision that extremist religious groups in Israel seek to achieve, ignoring dreams of peace or regional stability.

Daniela Weiss is not only a marginal extremist figure in Israel, but a de facto leader of the state, one of the responsible for the settlement movement in the West Bank, and one of the main arms of religious Zionism.

However, since some can delude themselves that this is not only this figure and that it does not affect state policy, we say that what Daniela Weiss is calling for is no different from what was clearly and frankly put forward by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of religious Zionism, who is today one of the most important political figures in Israel.

Smotrich appeared in a video on March 19, 2023 in Paris, France, speaking at a memorial service for the French Jew Jacques Coupfer,  who died in 2021, and who was one of the leaders of Israel Forever, a pro-Israel lobby in France and representing a far-right Kahane movement.

Smotrich appeared on a podium with a logo similar to that of the Irgun terrorist organization, bearing the image of Jordan and Palestine together, with a Jewish menorah and the words "Israel forever." The appearance infuriated Jordan, which issued an official statement condemning the act.

However, Smotrich once again infuriated the world with a sensational statement that appeared during his participation in a French documentary entitled "Israel: Ministers of Chaos" published at the end of September, when he answered a question about his desire for a full Jewish state, and whether Jewish sovereignty in his view should extend over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:  "Yes, for the time being," the journalist asked whether Jewish sovereignty would extend to the east of the Jordan River (i.e., to the Kingdom of Jordan today), to which he replied, "Yes, quietly," and then clarified his intention: "In our sacred texts, it is stated that Jerusalem alone will extend to Damascus," describing his vision of Greater Israel.

This brings us back to a provocative image that appeared during the diary of the war on Gaza, where some of the occupation soldiers fighting in Gaza, followers of the religious Zionist movement led by Smotrich and Ben Gvir, are shown wearing a logo containing a map of the so-called "Greater Israel" that clearly extends between the Euphrates and the Nile with the phrase "the promised land of Israel", and shows landmarks that include territories from Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Also referring to a famous video that went viral as Israel began its current war on Lebanon, shows a religious man telling his child a story about Lebanon and its Jewish property.
These accelerating and successive events show that the so-called dream of "Greater Israel" was never a fantasy and was not just a dream of some extremists obsessed with mythology or sacred religious texts, but rather a real vision that many members of extremist religious currents in Israel and abroad believe will be achieved as well as other "miracles."

They see that they are in the age of miracles, and therefore no longer hide their dreams and ambitions, which extend even beyond the borders of the Palestinian territories without shame or fear. This is part of the major transformation currently taking place in Israel as religious Zionism seeks to tighten control over the country's governance as part of its religious vision of salvation.

Therefore, the official Arab regimes must first realize that the new Israel, religious Zionism, wants nothing less than to acquire all this land, including, of course, the overthrow of the surrounding Arab regimes and the demographic and political change of the region, and therefore poses a grave danger to the Arab environment and the entire region in today's political concepts.

Although the stories of the Knesset phrase and the map of the Promised Land on the Israeli currency were not true, what events revealed since the Al-Aqsa flood until today confirm that Israel's new religious ambitions in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are an indisputable fact.