Obama is the wrong target

May 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

May 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

May 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Alan Hart, 31 May 2011

When I was reflecting on Netanyahu’s domination and control of the Congress of the United States of America, the first headline that came into my mind for this article was Goodbye to peace. I’ll now explain why I think the headline above is more appropriate.

Because of its flirtation with the proposition that peace between an Israeli and Palestinian state must be based on pre-1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, President Obama’s speech on Middle East policy principles did one useful thing. And it was Ha-aretz’s Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism, who put his finger most firmly on it. We should be grateful to Obama, he wrote, because his speech “exposed the naked truth – that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want peace.”

The Gentile me almost always agrees with Gideon but on this occasion, and leaving aside the fact that it was Netanyahu’s rejection of what Obama said initially that exposed the naked truth, I think Gideon’s version of it needs two clarifications.

One is that the truth was exposed like never before only to those who have not been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda – only a minority of Americans, for example.

The other boils down to this. What Netanyahu does want, and only because of his concern about Israel’s growing isolation in the world, is peace on Zionism’s terms, which means the Palestinians giving up their struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice and accepting crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of three or four Bantustatans on about 40% of the West Bank, and which they could call a state if they wished. That’s what Netanyahu meant but did not say when, at his arrogant, insufferably self-righteous and devious best, he assured both houses of the U.S. Congress that “We’ll be generous about the size of the Palestinian state.” Put another way, what Netanyahu doesn’t want is peace on terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims could accept – a complete end to Israel’s 1967 occupation and a contiguous and viable Palestinian mini state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states.

The only question of interest about Netanyahu is this. Does he really believe the nonsense he speaks about the alleged threats to Israel’s security or is he a smooth-talking but diabolical salesman, selling what he knows to be Zionist propaganda lies as truth?

Obama’s speech also exposed (again) the weakness of his own position on policy matters for Israel/Palestine when he said: “Ultimately it is up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them – not by the United States, not by anybody else.”

As things are that means Israel remains free to continue its criminal ways:

- defying UN Security Council resolutions and international law;

- pushing ahead with more and more illegal settlements to consolidate its hold on those parts of occupied West Bank it intends to keep for ever;

- oppressing the occupied Palestinians in the hope that, out of complete despair, they will either give up their struggle for an acceptable minimum amount of justice and be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table or, better still from Zionism’s perspective, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life elsewhere in the Arab world and beyond; and

- resorting to state terrorism (attacks on neighbouring Arab countries and possibly Iran) whenever its leaders feel the need to impose their will on the region.

Because of Israel’s dependence on the U.S. in a number of ways, not the least of them being the American veto of Security Council resolutions not to Israel’s liking, Obama does have the leverage to impose a Middle East peace on terms that would provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice without any risk to Israel’s security. And there’s a very compelling case for saying he ought to do so if only to best protect America’s own interests. I believe Obama knows this, so the question of real interest about him is this. Why won’t he act?

The answer of almost all of his critics who call and campaign in various ways for justice for the Palestinians is that he’s a willing tool of the Zionist lobby. I don’t believe this to be the case. I think the reality of Obama’s position was best summed up by Professor John J. Mearsheimer. To Al Jazeera recently he said this:

“ The sad fact is that Obama has remarkably little manoeuvre room on the foreign policy front. The most important item on his agenda is settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there he knows what has to be done: Push both sides toward a two-state solution, which is the best outcome for all the parties, including the United States. Indeed, he has been trying to do just that since he took office in January 2009. But the remarkably powerful Israel lobby makes it virtually impossible for him to put meaningful pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is committed to creating a Greater Israel in which the Palestinians are restricted to a handful of disconnected and impoverished enclaves. And Obama is certainly not going to buck the lobby – with the 2012 presidential election looming larger every day… The bottom line is that the US is in deep trouble in the Middle East and needs new policies for that region. But regrettably there is little prospect of that happening anytime soon. All of this is to say that there was no way that Obama could do anything but disappoint with Thursday’s speech, because he is trapped in an iron cage.”

This cage is, of course, the Zionist lobby’s control through its many stooges in Congress of policy for Israel-Palestine. It’s the cage in which post Eisenhower every American president has been trapped. As former ambassador Chas Freeman put it in a recent interview with Russia Today, Israeli leaders don’t have to listen to the president because they know their lobby can block him in Congress.

And that’s why, despite the fact that like Ilan Pappe I am sick and tired of Obama’s rhetoric, I’ve come to the conclusion that no useful purpose is served by supporters of justice for the Palestinians attacking him. He’s the wrong target. The right target is America’s pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders. In this context I say, have always said, that I don’t blame the Zionist lobby for playing the game the way it does. It is only playing by the rules. It’s the rules that need to be changed if Obama in a second term, or any future American president, is going to be able to escape from the cage and use the leverage he has to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.

Some members of Congress who applauded Netanyahu in a scene that reminded me of the enthusiasm for Hitler at Nazi rallies accused Obama of betraying Israel. There has indeed been a betrayal, but what has been betrayed is democracy in America. The many members of Congress who read from Zionism’s script and dance to its tune in order to secure election campaign funds and organized Jewish votes in tight races are not merely stooges. Because they are putting the interests of a foreign power above those of their own country, it’s time to call them what they really are – traitors.

In my view exposing them as such should be given the highest priority by all who campaign in various ways for justice for the Palestinians and peace for all.

Footnote:

Memo to all concerned in Congress and the White House.

Israel is not a “Jewish state”. How could it be when about a quarter of its citizens are Arabs and mainly Muslim? Israel is a Zionist state. It will only be a Jewish state when it has completed its ethnic cleansing program.

 

 

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Why does Israel have a veto over the peace process?

Israeli Pirate Flag Silwan - (June 26 2010, Rebecca Fudala)

Israeli Pirate Flag Silwan - (June 26 2010, Rebecca Fudala)

Alan Hart, 12 April 2011

As I explained on a lecture tour of South Africa (Goldstone Land) from which I have just returned, the answer is in what happened behind closed doors at the Security Council in New York in the weeks and months following the 1967 war. But complete understanding requires knowledge of the fact that it was a war of Israeli aggression and not, as Zionism’s spin doctors continue to assert, self-defense.
More than four decades on, most people everywhere still believe that Israel went to war either because the Arabs attacked (that was Israel’s first claim), or because the Arabs were intending to attack (thus requiring Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike). The truth about that war only begins with the statement that the Arabs did not attack and were notintending to attack. The complete truth, documented in detail in Volume Three of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews(www.claritypress.com), includes the following facts.

Israel’s prime minister of the time, the much maligned Levi Eshkol who was also defense minister, did not want to take his country to war. And nor did his chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin. They wanted only very limited military action, an operation far short of war, to put pressure on the international community to cause Eygpt’s President Nasser to re-open the Straits of Tiran.

Israel went to war because its military and political hawks wanted war and insisted that the Arabs were about to attack. They, Israel’s hawks, knew that was nonsense, but they promoted it to undermine Eshkol by portraying him to the country as weak. The climax to the campaign to rubbish Eshkol was a demand by the hawks that he surrender the defense portfolio and give it to Moshe Dayan, Zionism’s one-eyed warlord and master of deception. Four days after Dayan got the portfolio he wanted, and the hawks had secured the green light from the Johnson administration to smash Eygpt’s air and ground forces, Israel went to war.

What actually happened in Israel in the final countdown to that war was something very close to a military coup, executed quietly behind closed doors without a shot being fired. For Israel’s hawks the war of 1967 was the unfinished business of 1948/49 – to create a Greater Israel with all of Jerusalem its capital. (In reality Israel’s hawks set a trap for Nasser by threatening Syria and, for reasons of face, he was daft enough to walk, eyes open, into the trap). On the second day of the war, General Chaim Herzog, one of the founding fathers of Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, said to me in private: “If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext for war, we would have created one in a year to 18 months.”

As I say in my book, if the statement that the Arabs were not intending to attack and that Israel’s existence was not in any danger was only that of a goy, me, it could be dismissed by Zionists and other supporters of Israel right or wrong as anti-Semitic conjecture. In fact the truth has been admitted, confessed, by a number of Israeli leaders. Here are just three of many examples.

In an interview published in Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said this: “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar containined the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of the wartime national government. “The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”

In an unguarded public moment in 1982, Prime Minister Begin said this: “In June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

The single most catastrophic happening of 1967 was not however the war itself and the creation of a Greater Israel. At America’s insistence, and with the eventual complicity of the Soviet Union, it (the single most catastrophic happening) was the refusal of the Security Council of the United Nations to condemn Israel as the aggressor. If it had done so, the history of the region and the world might well have taken a very different course. (There might well have been a negotiated end to the Arab-Israeli conflict and a comprehensive peace within a year or two. To those who think that’s a far-fetched notion of what could have been, I say read my book, which includes a chapter headed Goodbye to the Security Council’s Integrity)

Question: Why, really, was it so important from Zionism’s point of view that Israel not be branded the aggressor when actually it was? The short answer of it comes down to this.

Aggressors are not allowed to keep the territory they take in war, they have to withdraw from it unconditionally. This is the requirement of international law and, also, a fundamental principle which the UN is committed to uphold, as it did, for example, when President Eisenhower read the riot act to Israel after it invaded Eygpt in collusion with Britain and France in 1956. That is on the one hand.
On the other is the generally accepted view that when a state is attacked, is the victim of aggression, and then goes to war in genuine self-defense and ends up occupying some (or even all) of the aggressor’s territory, the occupier has the right, in negotiations, to attach conditions to its withdrawal.

In summary it can be said that although Security Council Resolution 242 of 23 November 1967 did pay lip-service to “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”, it effectively put Zionism in the diplomatic driving seat. By giving Israel the scope to attach conditions to its withdrawal, Resolution 242 effectively gave Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby in America a veto over any peace process.
In 1957 President Eisenhower said that if a nation which attacked and occupied foreign territory was allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal, “this would be tantamount to turning back the clock of international order.” That’s what happened in 1967. President Johnson, pre-occupied with the war in Vietnam, and mainly on the advice of those in his inner circle who were hardcore Zionists, turned back the clock of international order. And that effectively created two sets of rules for the behaviour of nations – one set for all the nations of the world excluding only Israel, which were expected to behave in accordance with international law and their obligations of members of the United Nations; and one set for Israel, which was not expected to behave, and would not be required to behave, as a normal nation.

At the Johnson administration’s Zionist-driven insistence, the refusal of the Security Council to brand Israel as the aggressor was the birth of the double-standard in the interpretation and enforcement of the rules for judging and if necessary punishing the behaviour of nations. This double-standard is the reason why from 1967 to the present a real peace process has not been possible.

In my view there is not a snowball’s chance in hell of a real peace process unless the double-standard is abandoned. Unless, in other words, the governments of the major powers, led by America, say something like the following to Israel: “Enough is enough. It is now in all of our interests that you end your defiance of international law. If you don’t we will be obliged to brand you as a rogue state and subject you to boycott, divestment and sanctions.”

 

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Could pariah status spell the end for Zionism?

Alan Hart

Alan Hart, 8 March 2011

Definition: Pariah – a social outcast (Chambers Dictionary)

One eminent Israeli who apparently thinks the answer could be yes is Ilan Baruch, a veteran diplomat who resigned ahead of his retirement because, he said, he could no longer represent his government’s “wrong” policy. He also ridiculed Zionism’s assertion that global anti-Israeli sentiments generated by occupation are a manifestation of anti-Semitism.
While serving as a tank platoon commander on the Suez Canal front, Baruch lost and eye and, Dayan-like, he wears a black eye-patch. His 30 years of service with Israel’s foreign ministry included postings to Singapore, Copenhagen and London and he served as ambassador to the Philippines and South Africa. In September 1993 he travelled with Prime Minister Rabin to Washington for the ceremony on the White House lawn which ended with the historic handshake after the signing of an interim agreement. (Prior to that trip, Baruch would have known that the Zionist lobby in America was totally opposed to Rabin going there to do business with Arafat. That was why Rabin didn’t want to go and had to be persuaded by President Clinton at his smooth talking best on the telephone. While in Washington on that occasion, Baruch would have learned what the lobby’s post handshake strategy was going to be – to rebrand Arafat as a “terrorist”).

On his return to Israel, Baruch set up and headed the foreign ministry’s desk dealing with economic relations with the Arab world. His own main focus was on relations with the Palestinians and the international donor community.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Baruch’s resignation was a diplomatic “earthquake” at the foreign ministry.

In a personal letter he sent to all foreign ministry employees explaining his decision to quit, Baruch wrote: “Identifying the objection expressed by global public opinion to the occupation policy as anti-Semitic is simplistic, provincial and artificial. Experience shows that this global trend won’t change until we normalize our relations with the Palestinians.”

And he gave this warning: “Should this trend continue, Israel will turn into a pariah state and face growing de-legitimization.”

Baruch has to be saluted for his stand and the courage it required but he’s not yet up to speed with events. So far as most peoples of the world are concerned, or so it seems, Israel is already a pariah state. And the fact that all the members of the UN Security Council minus only the U.S. voted for the resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank is surely an indication that governments might be catching up with their peoples.

As Aluf Benn noted in an article for Ha-aretz, the message Netanyahu ought to have got from what happened in the Security Council is that “Israel has no more friends in the international community.” Benn qualified that by adding: “It was only the flick of Obama’s finger that prevented a huge diplomatic defeat for the prime minister, and the White House went out of its way to make it clear that it does in fact support the condemnation and was voting against it only for domestic political considerations.” (For which read Obama’s fear of a confrontation with the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress).

In the countdown to Obama’s veto, I wrote that good sources were telling me that behind closed doors most if not all European governments were fed up with Israel and were ready, if only America would give the lead, to resort to sanctions in an effort to oblige Israel to comply with international law and end its 1967 occupation in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242. An indication that even Germany really is fed up with Israel’s intransigence has been provided by Uri Avnery. In his latest post, he tells of a telephone conversation between Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Netanyahu called “to rebuke her for Germany’s vote in favour of the Security Council resolution condemning the settlements.” Avnery went on:

“I don’t know if our prime minister mentioned the Holocaust, but he certainly expressed his annoyance about Germany daring to vote against the ‘Jewish State’. He was shocked by the response. Instead of a contrite Frau Merkel apologizing abjectly, his ear was filled by a schoolmistress scolding him in no uncertain terms. She told him that he had broken all his promises and that not one of the world’s leaders believes a single word of his any more. She demanded that he make peace with the Palestinians.”

In Aluf Benn’s analysis, Netanyahu now has “to choose between the ideology he was raised on and which is part of his internal belief system, and the duties of the leader of a small country entirely dependent on international support.”

A short and fairly accurate description of the ideology Netanyahu was raised on is something like this. “The world will always hate Jews. Zionism must therefore do whatever is necessary to build and secure Israel as a refuge of last resort for Jews everywhere. And if that means telling the world to go to hell, so be it.” (That’s actually why David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and others insisted that Israel should possess nuclear weapons – to have the reinforced ability to tell the world, not just the Arabs, to go to hell if necessary).

At the time of writing Netanyahu is preparing a damage limitation strategy which he will launch shortly with an “historic speech” announcing a new peace initiative. According to the leaks it will propose negotiations to set up a Palestinian state with “provisional (meaning temporary) borders” on about half the West Bank. (Roughly the same as Sharon was prepared to offer). Presumably the other half, including East Jerusalem, will remain stuffed with illegal Jewish settlements which control the West Bank’s main water resources. (Sharon once said the 1967 war was really all about water).

Netanyahu knows that even a quisling Palestinian leadership would not be able to negotiate on that basis, but peace with an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians is not his game. With its verbal re-commitment to a Palestinian state, his new peace plan will be a marketing exercise to assist the Zionist lobby in America and supporters of Israel right or wrong everywhere to rebrand him – to have him perceived as a leader who is misunderstood and even wronged, and who really is committed to a negotiated peace with the Palestinians. It’s by no means impossible that he will make some token withdrawals from the West Bank, in order to provoke a containable clash with settlers, in order for him to be able to say to the world something like, “Look, I really am serious but you must appreciate my difficulties.”

As ever the bonus will be that Netanyahu can blame the Palestinians for the failure of another attempt to get negotiations going. This is, in fact, the oldest trick in Zionism’s book. It was Ben-Gurion who invented it. Offer the Arabs something you know they can’t accept and then blame them when they don’t. (Two days after announcing that he was formulating a new peace initiative, at a press conference after his meeting with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera in Jerusalem, Netanyahu rehearsed his blame the Palestinians intention. He that it was Israel which was willing to take “many steps to promote peace and make compromises.” He added: “The Palestinians are the ones refusing to take similar steps, instead preferring to take advantage of the international community’s Pavlovian reflex in their favour.”)

It’s possible that a marketing exercise by Netanyahu will buy him and the Zionist colonial enterprise time, but in the longer term it’s unlikely to halt and then reverse the rising tide of anti-Israelism. Beyond the short term it could even be counter-productive (as almost everything Zionism does is) and reinforce the notion of Israel as a pariah state.

What then?

Is it possible that a global perception of them as citizens of a pariah state and the possibility of real sanctions will alarm enough Israeli Jews to the point where they will take to the streets in significant numbers to demand that their leaders be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept? (Tunisia and Egypt – let’s not say Libya – on the streets of Israel?!)

I don’t pretend to know the answer to this question but for the sake of discussion I think it is worth asking.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

IF Obama could put America’s own real interests first…

Alan Hart

Alan Hart, 29 Dec 2010

The headline is not meant to imply that I think he will. As things are he can’t because of the stranglehold on American policy for Israel/Palestine of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, the mainstream media and many institutions of state including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. My purpose is only to offer an answer to this question: What could happen if President Obama was able to put America’s own real interests first?

The answer has to begin with the statement (echoed by Mearsheimer and Walt and a growing number of respected and influential others) that unconditional support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong is not in America’s own best interests because it’s a prime cause of Arab and other Muslim hurt and humiliation, which is being transformed into a rising tide of anti-Americanism. To that can be added a related truth. America doesn’t have to have 1.5 billion Muslims (nearly one quarter of humankind) as enemies. Most Muslims do not hate America or Americans. What they do hate is the double-standard of American (and all Western) foreign policy, in particular its refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its crimes.

To put anti-Americanism into its true Arab perspective, I offered this thought in the Introduction to The False Messiah, Volume One of the American edition of my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (www.claritypress.com).

If it had been possible for an American President to wave a magic wand and have Israel back behind more or less its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with a Palestinian state in existence on the Arab land from which Israel had withdrawn as required by UN Security Council Resolution 242, and with Jerusalem an open, undivided city the capital of two states, the U.S. would have had, overnight, with one wave of that magic wand, the respect, friendship and support of not less than 95 per cent of all Arabs and very probably that of almost all Muslims everywhere. And if the President had also pressed the Arab regimes to be serious about democratizing their countries, the U.S. would have become the champion of the Arab masses, truly admired by them as it was when President Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.

In passing I’ll add that since I first wrote those words, I have addressed Arab and other Muslim audiences up and down the UK, in America and Canada and as far afield as India. On each and every platform I asked audiences if I was naïve for believing that an American president who did whatever was necessary to secure justice for the Palestinians would be rewarded with the respect, friendship and support of almost all Arabs and other Muslims. The answer was always the same. My figure of 95 per cent was almost certainly an under-estimate.

But since that response was conveyed to me things have got much worse. With his abject surrender to Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby, Obama has not only drawn public attention to America’s complicity in Israel’s defiance of international law, he is out-doing President George “Dubya” Bush in the business of targeted assassinations with drones over Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. The death toll of innocents killed is rising rapidly. Islam’s men of violence in that part of our world could not have a more effective recruiting sergeant.

What’s happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan (not to mention Iraq) underlines the fact that a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict on terms acceptable to the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere would not be enough to extinguish the fire of anti-Americanism, but it would make containing it a much more manageable proposition.

There are, in fact, firemen waiting to assist Obama (or his successor) to put it out completely. They are the leaders of Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas and the Taliban. America’s own real interests would be best served by Obama himself (or his successor) seriously engaging with them, taking full account of their concerns and fears.

There is no evidence (only Zionist assertion) that Iran’s divided ruling mullahs have any intention of developing nuclear weapons, but it would not be surprising if elements in Iran – the Revolutionary Guard? – are making a case for nuclear weaponization for the purpose of deterrence.

What Iran’s leaders and also those of Hizbollah, Hamas and the Taliban want most of all is an end to American exceptionalism, for which read imperialism, and all the arrogance, bullying and interference, as well as the killing, maiming and destruction, that comes with it.

On Israel-Palestine real positions (as opposed to Zionist assertions about them) are clear. Hamas is explicitly on the record with the statement that while it will not formally recognise Israel’s right to exist, it is pragmatically prepared to accept Israel’s actual existence inside its 1967 (pre-war) borders and to live in peace with it. And though they don’t say so openly, Iran and Hizbollah have a common pragmatic position. They will accept, reluctantly no doubt, whatever the Palestinians accept.

An American president who was free to put the best interests of his own nation and people first would now give priority to talking constructively to “the enemy”. With the assistance of the leaders of Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas, Obama (possibly at the risk of assassination) could create a whole new Middle East, one in which justice for the Palestinians and peace and security for all could flourish. (I’m sure that most of us would welcome a return to the days when we could check into an airport without being treated as a possible or probable terrorist).

It is, of course, true that there are powerful vested interests in the U.S. (Jewish and non-Jewish) which actually believe that unconditional support for Israel right or wrong is in America’s best interests. Because they are not completely stupid, they know this policy is not cost free. The presumption has to be that they also believe the cost in terms of American blood and treasure is a price worth paying. Hopefully the time is coming when enough Americans will say to them: “Stop this madness! You’re wrong. It’s not a price worth paying.”

For the neo-cons and their associates who marshal and deliver support for Israel right or wrong, and who by so doing subvert what passes for democracy in America, I have a New Year message. Learn the lesson of America’s costly and catastrophic adventure in Vietnam. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are militarily, you cannot destroy ideas with bullets and bombs, especially ideas rooted in the need for self-determination, justice and human and political rights.

I have no expectation that Zionism can learn this lesson. I believe it, Zionism, to be congenitally incapable of doing so. But one day most if not all Americans will learn it – won’t they…?

Footnote

It was in Vietnam as a very young correspondent for ITN (Independent Television News), when I was observing the U.S. spending six million dollars a minute on a war it could not win and should not have waged, that I first started to ask myself questions about why things are as they are in the world. Some years later the notion that America could not have won the war in Vietnam was challenged by Senator Barry Goldwater in private conversation with me. In 1964 this five-term senator from Arizona was the Republican Party’s nominee for president. He didn’t make it to the White House in part because President Johnson branded him as an extremist who might plunge America into a nuclear war. When I was on assignment for the BBC’s Panorama programme, Goldwater said to me in his Senate office: “We could have won the war in Vietnam. We should have nuked the North. What’s the point in spending so much money on developing nuclear weapons if you’re not prepared to use them?” (With Iran and North Korea on their minds, I imagine that some of today’s neo-con nuts agree with that. And I note that after he failed to secure a second term, perhaps because he offended the Zionist lobby too much by wanting to be serious about peacemaking in the Middle East, former President Bush the First said that his dream was of a “winnable nuclear war”).



Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Zionist lobby’s new orders for Obama

Alan Hart

Alan Hart, 20 Dec 2010

After his appointment as Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, California’s representative Howard Berman told The Forward, “Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist.” This is the man, one of the Zionist lobby’s most influential stooges in Congress, who introduced House Resolution 1734 which gives President Obama his new orders.

Thoroughly disingenuous, the resolution, which was drafted by AIPAC and in my view is an indication of panic on its part, was approved unanimously by the House of Representatives on 15 December. It

  • strongly and unequivocally opposes any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums;
  • calls upon the Administration to continue its opposition to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state;
  • calls upon the Administration to affirm that the United States would deny any recognition, legitimacy, or support of any kind to any unilaterally declared ‘‘Palestinian state” and would urge other responsible nations to follow suit, and to make clear that any such unilateral declaration would constitute a grievous violation of the principles underlying the Oslo Accords and the Middle East peace process;
  • calls upon the Administration to affirm that the United States will oppose any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums and will veto any resolution to that end by the United Nations Security Council (my emphasis added);
  • calls upon the President and the Secretary of State to lead a high-level diplomatic effort to encourage the European Union and other responsible nations to strongly and unequivocally oppose the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state or any attempt to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations or other international forums; and
  • supports the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the achievement of a true and lasting peace through direct negotiations between the parties.

As M.J. Rosenberg predicted (http://america-hijacked.com/2010/12/15/aipacs-palestinian-bashing-bill-rushed-to-floor-today) the Berman bill passed overwhelmingly, actually unanimously, “because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions – and not just on this issue.” He added: “The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate U.S. Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country. In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor.” (My emphasis added).

What Rosenberg thinks and writes is particularly interesting because in the early 1980s he was editor of AIPAC’s weekly newsletter Near East Report.

He noted that as is usual with Berman, “his resolution exclusively blames Palestinians for the collapse of peace talks; not a word of criticism of Israel appears.”

He went on: “There is only one reason that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed. It is the power of the ‘pro-Israel lobby’, led by AIPAC, which prevents the United States from saying publicly what it says privately: that resolution of a conflict which is so damaging to U.S. interests is consistently being blocked by the intransigence of the Netanyahu government and its determination to maintain the occupation.” (My emphasis added).

For now, Rosenberg says, the bottom line is money. “The U.S. government dances to Israel’s tune because it is afraid to risk campaign contributions.” But he also gives optimism a voice (as I sometimes do).

“It doesn’t have to be that way. If the administration and Congress put U.S. interests (and Israel’s too) over the craving for campaign contributions, the United States could tell the Israeli government that, from now on, our aid package comes with strings. Like an IMF loan (although aid to Israel is a gift, not a loan), we could say that in exchange for our billions, our UN vetoes of resolutions criticizing Israel, and our silence in the face of war crimes like Gaza, we want Israel to end the occupation within, say, 24 months. And Israel would have to comply because our military assistance is, as AIPAC likes to call it, ‘Israel’s lifeline.’”

I would like Rosenberg to be right about how Israel’s leaders would respond to real American pressure, but I am very far from convinced that he is. As my regular readers know, I think there is a possibility, even a probability, that if real American push came to Zionist shove, the preference of Israel’s deluded leaders would be to tell the American president of the moment (and the whole world) to go to hell. Whether or not they would actually do so would depend, I imagine, on the state of Israeli (Jewish) public opinion at the time. If most Israeli Jews were still as brainwashed by Zionist propaganda as they are today, they would probably back the mad men who lead them.

Question: Why do I think that Berman’s resolution is an indication of AIPAC panic?

The answer, most of it, is in my last post which was headlined Obama’s last card – Will he play it? My main point was that because he does not have to honour the promises made to Netanyahu to secure his delivery of a 90-day freeze on illegal settlement activity on the occupied West Bank, Obama is free to discontinue the presidential practise of vetoing Security Council resolutions which are critical of Israel.

My speculation is that AIPAC drafted House resolution 1734 and then got Berman to rush it through because it feared that Obama is thinking about instructing the US ambassador to the UN to the effect that there will be no further American veto on Security Council resolutions which are critical of Israel and/or call for the recognition of a Palestinian state inside 1967 (pre-war) borders.

So the question waiting for an answer is – Will Obama obey Zionism’s latest orders?

UPDATE

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 325 organizations working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine. In his account for AJPME of the hustled introduction and passage of Berman’s resolution, he explains why he thinks what happened is an indication that AIPAC “is losing its grip”. (Or as I put it, is beginning to panic).

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Obama’s last card – Will he play it?

President Barack Obama talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the conclusion of a statement to the press in the East Room of the White House, Sept. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Alan Hart, 13 Dec 2010

President Obama ought to have trouble sleeping at night knowing that by allowing Israel to continue its illegal settlement activity on the occupied West Bank he has made himself, and his country, openly complicit in the Zionist state’s defiance of international law. In a different America that ought to be enough to have any president removed from office.

Do I have a picture in my mind of a different America? Yes. In a recent interview with Der Spiegel,Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, said that most Americans are “stunningly ignorant” about the world. By definition a different America would be one in which Americans were aware of the fact that almost everything they have been conditioned to believe about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is Zionist propaganda nonsense. (Properly informed Americans would understand, for example, why continued, unconditional White House and Congressional support for the criminal state of Israel is not in America’s own best interests and is, actually, provoking a real and growing threat to them).

My main point comes down to this. Now that he doesn’t have to honour any of the promises Secretary of State Clinton is said to have made to Prime Minister Netanyahu in a desperate (and predictably doomed) effort to persuade him to deliver a 90-day settlement freeze, Obama does have one last card that he could play.

For an Israel that is becoming a pariah state in the view of many people around the world, the promise that mattered most was that Obama would go on doing what all of his predecessors have done – veto any resolution in the Security Council that was not to Israel’s liking.

In the coming days, weeks and months it’s not impossible that the Security Council will be asked to vote on resolutions condemning Israel. One might call for recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 (pre-war) borders. This would be, effectively, a demand for Israel to end its occupation. Another might call for sanctions to be imposed on Israel if it goes on defying international law.

Until Obama’s decision not to confront Netanyahu over settlements, there was little or no prospect of a resolution aimed at calling Israel to account getting as far as the Security Council. But that prospect is now a real one because the European Union is openly exasperated by Obama’s lack of leadership on the matter. (Privately, some if not all EU leaders may well share Eric Margolis’s view that Obama has shown himself to be “utterly without spine” and “terrified” of the Zionist lobby).

In her public statement, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, said this: “I note with regret that Israel has not been in a position to accept an extension of the moratorium as requested by the US, the EU and the Quartet.The EU position on settlements is clear – they are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace.”

But that was a only the tip of an EU iceberg. For some months my sources have been telling me that almost without exception European governments, behind closed doors, are really “pissed off” with Israel, and were hoping that once the U.S. mid-term elections were out of the way, Obama would be ready to read it the riot act and apply some real pressure.

A hint of what lies below the tip of the EU iceberg was made public in a letter 26 members of the European Former Leaders Group (EFLG) wrote to Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, with copies to the governments of its 27 member states. It called for strong measures against Israel in response to its colonial policy and refusal to abide by international law.

One of the letter’s main proposals was that the EU should announce that it will not accept any unilateral changes to the 1967 border that Israel carried out against international law, and that the Palestinian state must cover an area the same size as the area occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem its capital. To leave as little room as possible for ambiguity, the letter also recommended that the EU should support only minor land swaps on which the two sides agreed.

The signatories were:

Chris Patten, UK,
(co-chair), former Vice-President of the European Commission; Hubert Védrine, France,
(co-chair), former foreign minister; Andreas van Agt, Netherlands, former prime minister; Frans Andriessen, Netherlands, former finance minister and former Vice-President of the European Commission; Guiliano Amato, Italy, former prime minister; Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Netherlands, former minister and vice-prime minister; Hans van den Broek , Netherlands, former foreign minister and EU Commissioner; Hervé De Charrette, France, former foreign minister; Roland Dumas, France, former foreign minister; Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Austria, former European Commissioner; Felipe Gonzales, Spain, former prime minister; Teresa Patricio Gouveia, Portugal, former foreign minister; Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Sweden, former deputy prime minister; Lionel Jospin, France, former prime minister; Jean Francois-Poncet, France, former minister and senator; Romano Prodi, Italy, former President of the EU Commission and prime minister; Mary Robinson, Ireland, former President; Mona Sahlin, Sweden, chairman Swedish Social Democratic Party; Helmut Schmidt, Germany, former chancellor; Clare Short, UK, former minister; Javier Solana, Spain, former High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy; Thorvald Stoltenberg, Norway, former prime minister; Peter D. Sutherland, Ireland, former Director-General of the WTO; Erkki Tuomioja, Finland, former foreign minister; Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Latvia, former president; Richard von Weizsäcker. Germany, former President.

They noted that “The year 2011 will be of critical importance in determining the fate of the Middle East, perhaps for many years to come.” And one year on from their last report in December 2009 they said (my emphasis added):

“We appear to be no closer to a resolution of this conflict. To the contrary, developments on the ground, primarily Israel’s continuation of settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) including in East Jerusalem, pose an existential threat to the prospects of establishing a sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian state also embracing Gaza, and therefore pose a commensurate threat to a two-state solution to the conflict…
We consider it vital that the Council should identify concrete measures to operationalize its agreed policy and thence move to implementation of the agreed objectives. Europe cannot afford that the application of these policy principles be neglected and delayed yet again. Time to secure a sustainable peace is fast running out… It is eminently clear that without a rapid and dramatic move to halt the ongoing deterioration of the situation on the ground, a two-state solution, which forms the one and only available option for a peaceful resolution of this conflict, will be increasingly difficult to attain…
The EU has stated unequivocally for decades that the settlements in the OPT are illegal, but Israel continues to build them. Like any other state, Israel should be held accountable for its actions… It is the credibility of the EU that is at stake. The EU position could not be clearer, but – as we have argued above – failure to act accordingly, in the face of contraventions and disregard by Israel, undermines the EU and its credibility in upholding international law…
At stake are not only EU relations with the parties directly involved in the conflict but also with the wider Arab community, with which the EU enjoys positive diplomatic and trade relations.”

One possible translation of that is something like, “Europe can no longer allow its own best interests to be damaged by support for Israel right or wrong.”

It’s no secret that Israel’s deluded leaders and many of its brainwashed Jewish people don’t give a damn about what the EU really thinks because, they believe, only America matters. That has been the situation to date, but could it be about to change?

There’s a case for saying “Yes, perhaps”, but not in the way Israelis might imagine. In their letter the 26 said that “key U.S. figures” had suggested to them that “the best way to help President Barack Obama in his efforts to promote peace was to make policy that contradicts US positions” and which imposed consequences and costs on Israel.

One possible implication is that European leaders have been made aware that Obama needs and wants to be able to say behind his own closed doors something like: “If we don’t require Israel to act in accordance with international law, we’re heading for trouble with Europe and will become as isolated in the world as Israel is. We cannot let this happen.”

Which brings me back to Obama’s last card. The fact is that he does not have to instruct the US ambassador to the UN to vote against Israel in the Security Council. An American abstention would be enough to empower the nearest thing we have to world government to be serious about calling and holding the Zionist state to account for its crimes. And that could be, I repeat could be, a game changer.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Obama to Netanyahu – “You win”

President Barack Obama welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Sept. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Sept. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Sept. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Alan Hart, 8 Dec 2010

Those of us who are associated with the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and who call for justice for the Palestinians, now have reason to say “Thank you” to President Obama. With his decision to abandon efforts to persuade Israel to renew a freeze on illegal settlement building on the occupied West Bank, he has proved that the makers of American policy for resolving the conflict are Israel’s leaders and their lobby in the U.S. (including its many stooges in Congress and the mainstream media), not the man who occupies the Oval Office in the White House.

Of course I know this has always been the case (actually since the departure from the Oval Office of General Eisenhower who was the first and the last American President to oblige Israel to act in accordance with international law), but for a sitting president to provide by default the absolute proof is quite something.

The implications are truly terrifying, obviously for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians but also for Americans; and why is not difficult to explain.

As all seriously well informed people know (sadly the very few, not the very many), unconditional American support for the criminal state of Israel is not in America’s own interests. It is the best recruiting sergeant for violent Arab and other Muslim extremism and the prime cause of the gathering, global storm of anti-Americanism at street if not yet government level.

The first responsibility of any American president is to protect the security of his own people. With his latest surrender to Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby, Obama is effectively saying to his fellow Americans, “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to do that.”

As things are, the name of the game from here on in my view is not the pursuit of peace, that’s a mission impossible.

Priority number one is preventing the final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Priority number two is preventing the rising tide of anti-Israelism from being transformed into violent anti-Semitism.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

WikiLeaks: What, really, is the problem?

Wikileaks wallpaper 6

Alan Hart, 7 Dec 2010

Some commentators, bloggers and other writers, were quick to jump to the conclusion that the avalanche of documents being released by WikiLeaks is part and parcel of an Israeli/Mossad deception strategy. One implication being that WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange is, knowingly or not, manipulated by Zionism.

On the basis of the first two or three days of the Wikileaked revelations as reported by the mainstream media, in America especially, there most definitely was a case for saying that the agenda best served by the leaked diplomatic cables was that of the Zionist state of Israel, its lobby in America and its many stooges in Congress. The essence of the case was in the message that Iran is the biggest single threat to the peace of the region and the world not only because the Israelis say so but also because Arab leaders agree with them.

In my last post I quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, as saying he thought it was possible that Wikileaks was being fed and manipulated by intelligence services. And I stated my own belief of the moment that the question of whether or not this is so was worthy of investigation.

But as the flow of leaked cables increases, and with time for reflection, I no longer believe that such an investigation is necessary.

The problem is not the manipulation of WikiLeaks by any foreign intelligence service but, in effect, the manipulation by key players in the mainstream media, in America especially, of the material WikiLeaks is providing.

And here’s just one example to make the point.

When it learned from Wikileaked diplomatic cables that Arab leaders were at one with Israeli leaders in wanting the U.S. to attack Iran, journalism with integrity would have asked something like the following question. “Is Iran really the threat to the region and the world it is alleged to be by Israeli and Arab leaders?”

If that question had been asked, the honest answer would have been “No, of course it isn’t!

As I and others have pointed out a number of times, even a nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a threat to Israel’s existence or that of the states of the impotent and repressive Arab regimes which are more or less content to do the bidding of America-and-Zionism. To really believe otherwise (as opposed to not really believing but saying so for propaganda purposes) is to assume that a nuclear-armed Iran would at some point launch a first strike. That would never happen because Iran would be inviting its own complete destruction.

If Iran does end up with a nuclear bomb or several, it will be for the purpose of deterrence only. (As I said in my last post, if I was an Iranian, even one who hated the regime of the mullahs, I would feel more secure in the face of Israeli and American threats if my country did possess a nuclear bomb for deterrence).

Though much of it was confirmatory for informed journalists and politicians, the Wikileaked information is new but the real problem is not. It is (generally speaking) the mainstream media’s lack of integrity, in America especially; a lack of integrity which, in its reporting of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, manifests itself in one of two ways – in some cases by knowingly peddling Zionist propaganda, in other cases by self-censoring the truth about Israel’s crimes out of fear of offending Zionism too much or at all.

In my view Assange has damaged his own cause by releasing details of facilities around the world which U.S. authorities regard as being vital to America’s national security. By doing so he has given his enemies in governments everywhere what they did not previously have – a fig leaf of justification for their efforts to silence him.

If they succeed, the threat to what passes for democracy in the Western world, in America especially, will be even greater than it currently is.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found herehttp://www.alanhart.net/

Alan Hart

Alan Hart
Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/

More Articles on RamallahOnline can be found here

Zionism and Peace Are Incompatible

Alan Hart

Alan Hart, AlanHart.net, 22 Oct 2010

At last somebody has said it in the most explicit way possible. The somebody also said: “The problem is Zionism and the solution is dismantling the Zionist framework and instituting a secular democracy that does not discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The somebody was Miko Peled, a Jewish peace activist who was born in Israel and lives in America.

He is the son of an Israeli war hero, Matti Peled, who was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967. After that war, General Peled signalled his own commitment to truth by rubbishing Zionism’s version of events. He did so with the statement that there was not a threat to Israel’s existence and that it was a war of Israeli choice (i.e. aggression not self-defense). General Peled was also one of a number of prominent Jews who called soon after the 1967 war for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In his latest article from which my headline for this piece was extracted, Miko says that the two-state solution was clearly viable 40 years ago, but today…? He writes (my emphasis added):
“Now the West Bank is riddled with towns and malls and highways built on Palestinian land for Jews only and Israeli cabinet members openly discuss population transfers, or rather transfer of its non-Jewish population. The level of oppression and the intensity of the violence against Palestinians has reached new heights… Discussing the two-state solution now under these conditions shows an acute inability to accept reality… There is an illusion that a liberal, forward thinking government can rise in Israel and then everything will be just as liberal Zionists wish it to be. They will pick up where Rabin and Arafat left off and we will have the pie in sky Jewish democracy liberal Jews want so much to see in Israel. This illusion is shared by American Jews, liberal Zionists in Israel and around the world and in the West where guilt of two millennia of persecuting Jews still haunts the conscience of many. If only there were better leaders and if only this and if only that… But alas, reality continues to slap everyone in the face: Zionism and peace are incompatible. I will say it again, Zionism and peace are incompatible.”

Miko adds that serious study of the history of modern Israel shows that “the emergence of Netanyahu and Lieberman was perfectly predictable.”

I agree and offer this summary explanation of why.

Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism which created a state in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing. It is also a pathological mindset. In the deluded Zionist mind the world was always anti-Jew and always will be. It follows that Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning against Jews) is inevitable. It follows that there can be no limits to what Zionism will do in order to preserve nuclear-armed Greater Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews everywhere when the world turns against them.

When I was reflecting on Miko’s main point, that Zionism and peace are incompatible, I found myself wondering why really it is that American presidents will not use the leverage they have to try to call the Zionist state to account for its crimes when doing so would clearly be in America’s own best interests.

I’m beginning to think that the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress is not the complete answer. And the question I am asking myself is this: Could it be that all American presidents know there is nothing nuclear-armed Israeli leaders would not do if they were seriously pressed to make peace on terms which they believed in their own deluded minds would put Israel’s security at risk? Always in my own mind is what Prime Minister Golda Meir said to me in a BBC Panorama interview and from which I quote in my book – in a doomsday situation Israel “would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.”

If it is the case that American presidents are frightened of provoking Israel, the conclusion would have to be that the Zionist state is a monster beyond control and that all efforts for peace are doomed to failure.

Is the situation really as bad as that?

My own answer is yes. But there are some observers who think that after the mid-term elections in America there might be one more opportunity for President Obama to bring enough Israelis to their senses in order to give peace its very last chance.

This new hope has been inspired, apparently, by reports of a forthcoming Palestinian (and presumably wider Arab) initiative to have the Security Council recognize Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders.

In Ha’aretz on 20 October, Aluf Benn wrote this:

Israel’s diplomacy has reached a turning point. Instead of dealing with the failed direct talks, from this point Israel will be orchestrating a diplomatic holding action against the Palestinian initiative to have the UN Security Council recognize Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders. Such a decision would deem Israel an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures against Israel. Obama could scuttle the process by casting an American veto. Would he do it? And at what price?

Barak is warning Netanyahu that Obama is determined to establish a Palestinian state, even if it requires political risks. The president doesn’t have to come out publicly against Israel, but can simply stand on the sidelines when the Security Council recognizes Palestine. The international movement to boycott Israel will gain massive encouragement when Europe, China and India turn their backs on Israel and erode the last remnants of its legitimacy. Gradually the Israeli public will also feel the diplomatic and economic stranglehold.

It’s not certain that this will happen.

We shall see.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/