• Former VP, former CIA chief, Rothschild family take center stage in scheme.

By Richard Walker —

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Israeli government continues to build illegal settlements on the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 War, and that it is planning to make the region part of Israel. What should come as a surprise, however, is Israel’s true motivation for wanting to control the Golan. It is all about the massive reserves of oil and gas in that region. Washington is aware of this but is happy to ignore the fact that Syria is the rightful owner of the territory and Israel’s exploitation of it contravenes international laws.

Shockingly, the Obama administration also knows that an American company, Genie Energy Ltd., based in New Jersey, is at the center of an energy grab in the Golan Heights. In fact, the Netanyahu government, with the connivance of Washington, has granted Genie the rights to illegally explore 153 square miles of Golan for oil and gas. Therefore, Washington is enabling Israel’s illegal acquisition of the area by permitting an American company to be a party to the crime.

This partly explains Israel’s motivations for trying to destroy the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria by bombing the Syrian military and supporting its terrorist enemies, particularly the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State (ISIS).

Netanyahu has spent years persuading his allies on Capitol Hill to force regime change in Syria. His ultimate goal has been the break-up of Syria so it can never effectively enforce its historical ownership of the Golan Heights. This highlights the blatant lengths to which Israel will go to create its own energy reserves and the extent to which Washington is always on hand to assist in Israel’s criminality.

The story of the Golan land grab and the conspiratorial way Israel and its backers have made their play to destroy Syria comes straight from the neocon playbook that has created so much horror across the region over decades. It is part of an overarching strategy to control natural resources around the world, using the tactic of regime change. One only has to look at the membership of Genie’s Strategic Advisory Board to trace the company’s neocon lineage.

Prominent among the board’s members is Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney for whom the destruction of the Syrian regime was a major goal when he was running White House foreign policy for George W. Bush.

Others include media mogul Keith Rupert Murdoch, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Robert James Woolsey Jr., who has links to Netanyahu’s Likud party, Lord Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, a senior partner in Genie, Michael H. Steinhardt, a billionaire hedge funder and member of the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, William Blaine “Bill” Richardson III, energy secretary under Bill Clinton, Lawrence Henry “Larry” Summers, treasury secretary, also under Clinton, and Mary Loretta Landrieu, the former Louisiana senator who helped pass energy legislation favorable to Israel while she was on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The Israeli subsidiary of Genie is run by former Israeli General Efraim “Effi” Eitam, a close buddy of Netanyahu. He is an extreme religious figure who has recommended removing all Israeli Arabs from Israel. He lives in one of the large Jewish settlements on the Golan.







There has been a deliberate campaign within Israel for a massive expansion of settlement building in the Golan as a means of cementing Israel’s control over it, in much the same way Israel has established its presence in large Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Netanyahu has been encouraging his supporters in Washington to demand that the U.S. recognize Israel’s 1967 annexation of the Golan.

One source this writer spoke to suggested Netanyahu secretly offered Obama a way out of the Iran nuclear deal impasse if he supported Israel’s annexation of the Golan.

Obama rejected that offer, but only after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent him a clear message he would not stand by and allow Israel to claim Golan and the oil and gas under it.

Putin also pointed out that the United Nations (UN) has consistently stated Israel has no right to Syrian territory. The Security Council’s position was made clear in 1981 in Resolution 242, which demanded Israel exit Golan. Of course, Israel refused to do so and to this day it resents the presence of UN observer troops on the Heights. Those troops have consistently reported Israeli military links to ISIS and al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot, Jahbat al-Nusra. Evidence of the terror links has been ignored on Capitol Hill and has not been reported by the mass media.

The stark reality surrounding this issue is Washington’s willingness to permit an American energy company, in conjunction with its Israeli subsidiary, to break international law by illegally sourcing energy with the aim of stealing it to benefit Israeli occupiers and their neocon backers.

Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.