Demonstrators burn representations of the Israeli flag during pro-Palestinians demonstrations in Tehran

Washington, September 27 (RHC)-- A retired U.S. Army Colonel and former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says Israel will not survive the next 20 years, as Tel Aviv is delegitimizing itself as an apartheid regime.

“Israel would not be in 20 years, it would be gone.  It certainly will not be a democracy.  It will be an apartheid regime and the world will just reject it as they did South Africa.  I’m now saying it will be gone,” Lawrence Wilkerson said.

He pointed to the 1946 Joint Chiefs of Staff to State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, noting that then U.S. President Harry Truman was trying at the time to decide whether to recognize Israel in 1947-48 and what to do about U.S. policy.

Wilkerson said Israel is a “strategic liability of the first order” for the United States, and the chances are very high it would drag Washington’s feet into a full-fledged face-off.

“Israel is the most likely regime in the world to take the United States to Armageddon.  I could paint you all sorts of ways we can do that and the ways we could get there,” he said.  “The only strategic positive with regard to Israel is our relationship.  That is to say, there are a lot of American Jews and there are a lot of connections with Israel.  That’s the only positive aspect to our relationship, everything else is negative,” he added.

The retired colonel also revealed that during 40 years of military service, he had heard constant advice from everyone not to establish an American military base in the Israeli-occupied territories.  He stressed that the United States standing with Israel against half the world is not a good thing.  The Israeli regime, he said, needs to be controled, but that would not happen.

“Yes, Israel needs to be reined in and it needs to be told in no uncertain terms that you will change and you will change swiftly and effectively or you can count your sugar daddy gone.  It’s not going to happen,” he said.

Wilkerson went on say that the obsession of U.S. neoconservatives is to plunge the entire Middle East region into chaos, and to keep Israel’s enemies at each others’ throats so they could not coalesce, and give Israel trouble militarily or otherwise. 

He pointed out that it does not matter for neoconservatives to target Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Iran in their pursuit to set the region on fire, as the important thing for them is to protect Israel.