Dr. Lawrence Davidson
Making The Same Mistake Twice
It is estimated that up to a million people died as a function of George Bush Jr.’s decision to invade Iraq. According to Bush, that decision was made on the basis of “faulty intelligence.” This is the ex-president’s way of passing the blame. The decision was made by Mr. Bush’s insistence that the accurate intelligence he was getting from traditional sources was false, and that the lies he was being told by other parties were true.
Stuart Littlewood
Let’s shred and vapourise a few million more innocents… But first we’ll strangle them with sanctions, say our elected leaders.
Is this what we voted for?
Is this what Western diplomacy has come to in the 21st century?
Thank heaven for Dr David Morrison’s very timely briefing document entitled “Iran hasn’t got an active nuclear weapons programme, says US intelligence” http://www.david-morrison.org.uk/iran/iran-no-nuclear-programme.htm . Morrison is the noted political researcher from Northern Ireland. He sets out the position in easy-reading form so that even our dimmest politicians can understand. Continue reading
Sami Jamil Jadallah
With the exception of Tony Blair, the modern day Lord Balfour who had “special” business and political relations with Gaddafi, every one in Libya and the Arab world is quite happy with the news of the end of Mouamar Gaddafi and his regime. It is only fitting for a bloody dictator and a regime to meet a bloody end. No one should shed tears. Contrary to his claim to die fighting, Gaddafi was pulled from a sewer pipe like a rat.
Like so many bloody kelpto-criminal dictatorships, Gaddafi was and for a time the darling of the West specially after abandoning his weapons of mass destruction program. The US George Bush dispatching Condi Rice to engage him and Hilary Clinton as recent as this January treated his son Moutasim as royalties warmly shaking hands with the towering Moutasim.
While the US did not sponsor Mouamar Gaddafi in certain periods of his regime, it did engage him and according to certain reports facilitated his coming to power and with the exception of Fiedel Castro the US engaged if not sponsored every dictator and dictatorships in Latin and Central America, in the Middle East, in East Europe, certainly in the Far East.
The US more than any other country in the world should take the blame for the millions who died and suffered under military dictatorship that not only killed and tortured its citizens but looted the country as well.
We all need to remember the likes of the late Shah of Iran who was brought back to power by coupe organized by the CIA with a planned budget of $1,000,000 with $100,000 distributed in cash to the streets and the remaining $900,000 was handed over by Kermit Roosevelt to Ardashire Zahedi as part of Operation Ajax.
The Shah who ruled his country with an iron fist relying on the CIA, Mossad and his torturous SAVAK also looted the country and allowed his close circle of generals and advisors to loot tens billions of dollars allowing them to live the good life in Switzerland, in West Europe, certainly in the US and around Washington DC.
While the people lived in dire poverty in the country side, the Shah was able to spend $100 millions on his coronation ceremony in 1967 in the city of Persepolis as King of Kings with heads of states, diplomats, movie starts counted among the guests with caviar, chefs and Baccarat crystals flown from France dinning on Limoges porcelain china.
We all should remember the end of the man, politicians and socialists adorned him as “emperor of emperors”, dejected pegging for a country to give him asylum and a place to die.
Nicolae Ceausescu was anther dictator much beloved and admired by American presidents who received him in White House, simply because who took an independent line from Moscow when it came to the Middle East and his relationship with Israel not withstanding his bloody and ruthless dictatorship and his looting of the country making every Romanian poor with the exception of his immediate family and his close circle of friends. I will never forget that night in a Geneva hotel when I saw his execution on December 25th, 1989.
General Suharto of Indonesia and General Ferdinand Marcos were among the many dictators the US not only supported but sponsored delivering weapons and riot fighting equipments allowing these two to loot their country blind and run authoritarian bloody regimes with wide spread corruptions, all in the name of supporting anti-Communist regimes.
In Latin and Central the US and over the last century have supported and given aid and comfort to a dozen of civilian and military dictatorship key among them the likes of Anatasio Somoza Garcia and his family, Fulencio Batista of Cuba, General Noriega of Panama, and of course General Augusto Pinochet who ruled Chile with an iron fist for 17 years, murdering in cold blood mover 3,000 and torturing hundreds of thousands.
In Central America, the US the could not find one military dictator it did not like. The US sponsored, trained and funded the many military rulers and dictators that ruled Central America where some 500,000 people died or killed as a direct result of these military dictatorship and the wars they waged against their people and the resulting civil wars.
In Africa the story was no different, American presidents disgraced the White House with receptions offered to killers and murderers the likes of Samuel Doe of Liberia, who upon taking control in a bloody coupe tied more than 17 members of Liberian cabinet to palm trees and shot them.
Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire was another favored dictator favored in Washington, Paris, London and Brussels. Mubuto Sese Seko took over Zaire in a CIA sponsored coupe on 14 September 1960 and ran Zaire to the ground while looting its wealth. Western governments were only too happy to support such criminal dictators as long as they claim to fight Communism.
In the Middle East the story was no different. It is well known fact that the CIA not only provided safe house for Saddam when he was injured and fled the attempted assassination attempt on General Abdul-Kareem Qassem and later in 1968 sponsored his return to Iraq to become the VP of Iraq.
During the 8 years war with Iran, the US under the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein over $40 Billions in aid in his fight against Iran and forced the neighboring Arab Gulf countries to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to Saddam, money and resources that could have done wonder in the development of the Arab world from Morocco to Yemen to Syria to Bahrain.
Until the evening of his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam was America and Europe favorite Arab dictators knowing well he ran a bloody criminal authoritarian regime were more than one million persons were killed or murdered and were for the first time chemical weapons were used against civilians targets, Iraqi Kurds killing 5,000 instantly and injuring 10,000. Donald Rumselfed was to deliver Ronald Reagan congratulations to the Iraqi dictator.
The United States played a key and critical role in perpetuating Saddam Hussein dictatorship providing it with money, economic and military aids and of course providing legal and international cover and immunity for its crimes. Thanks to a freedom loving American administration millions of people died during and after Saddam in Iraq, and in Iran and over $1.5 Trillions of Arab wealth simply disappeared and evaporated if not looted by the merchants of death.
Hosni Mubarak and Bin Ali were the darling of the United States the model of modern Arab rulers and police states where dictators rule with iron fists making sure the country and the West id free of “Islamists” and rewarding these two regimes for their openness and special relationship with Israel.
No doubt the US which contracted countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other North Africa countries as “torture contractor” was only too happy to seek these rulers and dictators and their families not only loot the country clean but imprisoned, killed and tortures tens of thousands of citizens.
Kelpto-dictarotship touted by the World Bank and the IMF as model emerging economies were millions lived below poverty lines and with millions unemployed. International donors, financial instructions never looked beyond the “cooked” financial and economic books presented by the leadership of these countries and never bothered to leave their 5 stars hotels and see the utter misery the majority of people lived in.
With Mouamar Gaddafi meeting the bloody end he deserve the Arab Spring must continue and succeed in countries and against dictatorship
In Syria, in Yemen perhaps with these dictators meeting the same bloody end. Those who rule by the sword will die by the sword. Grieved, oppressed, tortures and dramatized people should not have mercy on those who rules them.
In closing I want to address this question to President Obama and the leaders of the West, why is it OK for the Libyans, the Syrians and the Yemenis, the Egyptians and the Tunisians to rise up against oppression and dictatorship and in the case of Libya to use force with support from NATO while denying the Palestinians the right to have a seat at the UN to seek freedom and independence from the Jewish Occupation, not by use of arms but by getting a UNSC resolution to demand the immediate end of the Jewish Occupation that lasted more than Gaddafi 42 years of bloody rule? An explanation is needed.
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.
Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah
Born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh ( presently under Israeli Military Occupation, Armed Jewish thugs and settlers). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army ( 66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers where in US military service about the same time. Graduated from Indiana University with BA-72, Master of Public Affairs-74 and Juris Doctor-77, and in senior year at IU,was elected Chairman of the Indiana Student Association.
UN 194-Ceremonies
Sami Jamil Jadallah
This time around Mahmoud Abbas did it, contrary to the skeptics and I am one of them, who believed he would back out the last minute and that he would blink in a game of chicken with a shameful and shameless Obama and his White House. He did what he should have done long time ago back in 1988. He did it what the people of Palestine wanted and should have done long ago. At the UN he spoke so well, so much from the heart, so much truth, in contrast to Obama’s bankrupt and hypocritical speech and in contrast to Netanyahu’s condensing lies and make believe.
Mr. Mahmoud Abbas did not go far enough in his speech. He should have demanded an immediate end to the Jewish Military and settlers Occupations without any conditions or if or but. He should have demanded the immediate take over by the UN of the Palestinian Occupied Territories, both Gaza and the West Bank and the disbanding of operating local governments and demanded the immediate deployment of peace keeping troops to take over the security and safety of the Palestinians and their properties, land and resources and end the siege of Gaza.
He should announce the disbanding of the Palestinian Authority as an instrument of the continued Jewish Occupation and its manager. He should have announced right there and then the cancelation and voiding of Oslo Accord and to have admit it was a big, sad and tragic political mistake and that it was simply wrong to trust Israel or the Jewish state to keep any of its promises, promises it never keeps with any one, including the US.
He should have announced the disbanding of the Palestinian Security Forces as a useless, helpless security forces that has consistently failed to provide safety and security for the Palestinian people, their lives and their properties from the ever trigger happy Jewish army, and an ever greedy Jewish government that loves to steal and confiscate and is addicted to land theft and house demolition. A security forces that was never able to protect the Palestinian people and their properties from a marauding criminal gangs of Jewish terrorists living and residing in illegal Jewish settlements and admit it a security forces for the occupation.
He did not go far enough in telling Tony Blair, Dennis Ross and all the international emissaries that come to Ramallah to give lip services to simply go to hell and that they are no longer welcomed in the Palestinian “Jewish Occupied” Territories and that he is no longer willing to listen to their lies, fraud and hypocrisy. He should have told the Quartets to go to hell for failing to be fair and honest broker that always justify and stand useless and helpless in front of daily crimes committed by the Jewish state, its army, its settlers and its Jewish judicial system that is totally and unconditionally biased in favor of Jews and against all others.
Mr. Abbas should have told President Obama that he, the Palestinians and in fact all the Arabs and Muslims and the world at large are no longer willing to accept the United States as a biased, dishonest and highly “toxic “ peace broker that always supported Israel and its armed, destructive and criminal Jewish Occupation right or wrong.
That the Palestinians and the Arabs are no longer willing to accept the role of the United States as a dishonest broker when it funds and arms the Jewish and settlers occupation, provide political and legal covers for Israeli war crimes and support and stand by Israel as it destroy Gaza and continue to hold the 1.5 million under siege and hostage and as it commit murder and piracy on the high seas.
Mahmoud Abbas first step toward legitimacy is to demand the dismantling of the PLO as the illegal and illegitimate representative of the people and to demand and organize a new and truly representative body of the Palestinian people to be voted on by the people. He should demand the immediate implementation and carrying out of investigations of political and financial corruption that riddles the PA, Fatah and the PLO and demand open and public hearing of all the dormant files and immediate cleansing of the corruption and the corrupt. He should demand and open public hearing into the tens of billions stolen and fleeced by the PLO executives and their families over the years.
Please take the time to read the full text of Mr. Mahmoud Abbas excellent speech at the UN… it is worth it. Thank you Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, you have made the people proud, and you spoke so well, not only for the Palestinians but for the world as well. Keeping mind the “international community” is not limited to or as defined by Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Please take the time to read and view the full text and speech of Mr. Mahmoud Abbas. Thank you..
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_rd3PqT-k
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7zWz4mTCyg
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.
Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah
Born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh ( presently under Israeli Military Occupation, Armed Jewish thugs and settlers). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army ( 66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers where in US military service about the same time. Graduated from Indiana University with BA-72, Master of Public Affairs-74 and Juris Doctor-77, and in senior year at IU,was elected Chairman of the Indiana Student Association.
Sam Bahour, 21 June 2011
For anyone closely following the Palestinian-Israeli issue, nothing is more insulting than the world’s political players peddling another peace initiative, crusading as the ultimate formula to extract the conflict from its current abyss.
The most recent episode of such political peddling happened in rapid fire from mid-May to early June 2011, when US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu engaged in a ping-pong-like game of four days of policy speeches. The political fallout of these speeches was rather predictable. The media hailed Obama’s words as historic and started to view his approach as a new set of parameters (which are actually a step back from past US parameters) that could serve to bring the parties back to the negotiations table and on a path to resolving the conflict.
Those immersed in this conflict knew better. They saw Obama’s words for what they really were: a total buckling of US policy to an arrogant and intransigent Israeli prime minister who wields tremendous domestic leverage on US politics by way of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). For Obama, who already has his eye on the prize of a second term, the pressure was too much to bear.
A few days later, yet another “peace initiative” was announced, this time from France. In reply to the French announcement, the June 6 Haaretz editorial title read loud and clear: “Netanyahu must accept French peace initiative”. The editorial explained why:
France has placed an offer on the desk of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Begin direct negotiations with the Palestinians in September, on the basis of the Obama plan. The proposal does not define Israel’s borders, draw a map of Jerusalem or determine which settlements Israel must remove. It even helps the Israeli position in that it speaks of “two states for two peoples,” in other words it acknowledges that Israel is a Jewish state. It opposes unilateral steps by either side–that is, both the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinians’ intention of seeking UN recognition for their state.
Anyone who knows anything about this conflict can tell you that this so-called “initiative” has as much chance of serving its proclaimed purpose as Hosni Mubarak has of being re-elected as president of Egypt.
The collective global memory seems to be in deep amnesia. We have been here before–at a point where half-baked initiatives and resolutions, non-compliant with international law and absent of any sense of historical justice, were touted as “the right formula”.
Palestinians don’t forget so easily, especially since their deep wounds due to dispossession since 1948, military occupation since 1967 and non-stop institutional discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel have never been given a chance to heal.
To name just a few of the past infamous peace initiatives, whose number is mind-boggling: UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) Future Government of Palestine (November 29, 1947), Count Folke Bernadotte proposals (1947-1948), UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967), Jarring Mission (1967-1971), Allon Plan (July 26, 1967), Rogers Plan (1969), UN Security Council Resolution 338 (October 22, 1973), Reagan Plan (Sept. 1, 1982), Oslo Accords (1993), Wye River Memorandum (October 23, 1998), Camp David 2000 Summit (2000), The Clinton Parameters (December 23, 2000), Taba summit (January 2001), The Tenet Plan (June 13, 2001), Elon Peace Plan (2002), Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement (2002), Arab Peace Initiative (March 28, 2002), The People’s Voice (July 27, 2002), Road Map for Peace (April 30, 2003), Geneva Accord (October 20, 2003), Sharm el-Sheikh Summit of 2005 (February 8, 2005), 2006 Franco-Italian-Spanish Middle East Peace Plan and, sadly, the list goes on and on.
For those still believing a two-state solution paradigm is possible, one past initiative is worthy to reflect upon: that of Count Folke Bernadotte. On May 20, 1948, Count Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and nobleman, was unanimously appointed as the United Nations mediator in Palestine, the first official mediator in UN history. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the militant Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties. Lehi was led at the time by Yitzhak Shamir, who later became prime minister of Israel.
After unsuccessfully trying to promote the idea of a “union” between Palestine and Transjordan, he proposed two independent states. This proposal was completed on September 16, 1948, and its seven “basic premises” were:
1. Peace must return to Palestine and every feasible measure should be taken to ensure that hostilities will not be resumed and that harmonious relations between Arab and Jew will ultimately be restored.
2. A Jewish State called Israel exists in Palestine and there are no sound reasons for assuming that it will not continue to do so.
3. The boundaries of this new State must finally be fixed either by formal agreement between the parties concerned or failing that, by the United Nations.
4. Adherence to the principle of geographical homogeneity and integration, which should be the major objective of the boundary arrangements, should apply equally to Arab and Jewish territories, whose frontiers should not therefore, be rigidly controlled by the territorial arrangements envisaged in the resolution of 29 November.
5. The right of innocent people, uprooted from their homes by the present terror and ravages of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective, with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return.
6. The City of Jerusalem, because of its religious and international significance and the complexity of interests involved, should be accorded special and separate treatment.
7. International responsibility should be expressed where desirable and necessary in the form of international guarantees, as a means of allaying existing fears, and particularly with regard to boundaries and human rights.
Although this two-state approach is more honest in its larger context (as it relates to the flawed notion of “Jewish state” and right of return of Palestinian refugees), the text in premise four demonstrates that Count Bernadotte, 64 years earlier, stated the same principle that President Obama and the most recent French “initiative” promote: setting borders not compliant with the reference at the time, which was UN Resolution 181, the Partition Plan.
Sixty-four years has only changed the reference point of borders to the disadvantage of Palestinians, and today, the forces-that-be are proposing that the 1949 Armistice line (1967 green line) not be respected. Palestinians can only expect that remaining on the same path will result in Israel gobbling up more land while the international community continues to grasp for a workable initiative. In the meantime, the entire two-state paradigm is collapsing.
I’ll never understand why they call this field “political science”, for it is political art at its worst.- Published 20/6/2011 © bitterlemons.org
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business development consultant. He is co-author of “HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians” (1994). This article was first published at Bitterlemons.org
Changing the facts on the ground - Bodies of olive streets cut by settlers sit on the highways sidelines
Sami Jamil Jadallah, 4 June 2011
Question, why should any one, let alone the Palestinians accept “Israel’s facts on the ground” when Israel not only never accepted “Palestinian’s facts on the ground” but through brute force changed these facts? The fact that Israeli Jews and beyond them American Jews claims special rights to the land, does not mean, these claims must be accepted by every one and it does not mean Israeli Jews are exempted from the rule of international law.
Terrorist Brothers in Arms - Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff of the Obama White House, spent a week in Israel just before Israel's attack on the Freedom Flotilla. Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and son of an Irgun terrorist, met with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 26, 2010. The Obama administration refused to condemn Israel's criminal action on the high seas in which at least nine unarmed civilians were killed.
Today, of all people the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel taking time out and having solved the city’s garbage, sewer, transport, education crime and urban problems published an Op-Ed article in the “ Washington Forum” of the Washington Post reminding us that 67 borders are” one starting point of negotiations, not the end point”.
Well, that may be fine with the son of a proud Jewish terrorist who opted out of serving in this nation army and chose to volunteer in the Israeli army to give us his views on “Jewish facts on the grounds” but his views and all those of American Zionist Jews, who and since the days of Lyndon Johnson shaped and formulated US policy in the Middle East to go along with the Talmudic claims for the rights of the land as “God given” and not won through pre-emptive war.
No thanks to US sponsored policy and since 67 and in contradiction to international laws, the Geneva Convention against moving “civilians” to occupied territories and against the word and spirit of both USSC resolutions 242 and 338, Israel made it and continue to make it a point to create “Israeli and Jewish facts on the grounds”. Facts that are results of land theft and land grab, systematic expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians Arabs from their lands and homes to allow the building of Jewish settlements all over the Occupied West Bank and specially around Jerusalem.
Forget about God, the Promise Land and the “Chosen People” and all that crap, I never understood and no one so far made a credible case for accepting Israeli and Jewish facts on the grounds while denying “Arabs and Palestinians facts on the ground”; not the Israelis, not the American Jewish leadership and community, not the American Zionist Jews members of this administration and past administrations, not President Obama, not Clinton, or Bush, or Reagan let alone Nixon or Johnson, certainly not Mahmoud Abbas, not Saeb Erekat, not Yasser Abed-Rabou can deny the Palestinian people their rights to lands and properties stolen by Israel to create its facts on the ground.
Successive Israeli governments from day one of the 67 War made sure that the State of Israel with total and unconditional support from the United States creates “facts on the grounds” that will make peace, based on “land for peace” and based on UN Security Council resolutions never happens.
fragmentation of the Palestinian West Bank (Courtesy InPursuitofJustice)
Even after Oslo which was supposedly set the stage for a timely and negotiated peace settlement, Israel continued with land grabs and continued to expropriate lands for its settlements, for its Jewish Only Roads, for its Apartheid Wall and the denial of Palestinians “residency” in their hometowns and villages to the tune of over a million counting family members, this is in addition to the systematic ethnic cleansing of some 80,000 Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) from East Jerusalem. During the Oslo years, the numbers of Israeli settlers, trespassers and land thieves went from 150,000 to more than 500,000.
While the Palestinian leadership and negotiating team was enjoying cocktail parties, private dinners in West Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv enjoying first travel around the world, Israel was creating its own facts on the ground. It seems the Palestinian leadership of Abbas/Erekat never bothered to think about “Palestinians facts on the ground” failing to challenge the Israeli facts on the ground and making a stand on this long long time ago. It is clear that the Palestinian negotiating team was aware of this and it was of the hidden and secret plans revealed in the Palestine Paper to agree to exchange Palestinian prime real estate land in and around Jerusalem for Israeli toxic waste dumps in the Negev.
Now America and Israel will argue, but after all these years and after all of this massive investments in Jewish settlements, it will be difficult to make these Jews move out of these settlements and go back to Israel. And both will argue the case that using “force” is unacceptable to get these Jews to move out, and even if they move out, the US tax payers will be called up to pay the necessary compensations in the tens of billions.
Well, America and Israel can argue for these “Jewish facts on the ground” and that it is politically and financially difficult to remove and resettle all 500,000 Israeli and Jewish squatters. Forgetting the fact that Israel to realize its “Jewish facts on the ground” used tanks, armed soldiers and armored bulldozers to remove and evict a similar number of Palestinian from their homes, farms and lands. The sad and tragic thing about, that not the US, not the UN, not even the Palestinian leadership made an issue out of the undoing of “Palestinian facts on the ground”
If Israel was able to evict 500,000 Palestinians then it can equally and easily evict 500,000 Jewish squatters and land thieves. I simply see nothing in international law that makes an Israeli Jew a privileged, qualified for “special” status.
While the Palestinian leadership of Abbas/Saeb seems set on rewarding Israel for its facts on the ground with a land swap for the large settlements around Jerusalem, Nablus and El-Bireh, most likely and I will even bet $1,000 that Israel will demand and will get the US to pay a million dollars compensation to every Jewish land thief in the smaller settlements. Israel with its army of Holy Jewish Worriers in this administration and in Congress will make sure it milks US tax payers for every step in the process from building settlements to evacuating settlements. Poor American taxpayers and citizens, they are the biggest losers in this whole Middle East conflict, being milked every step of the way.
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.
Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah
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 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/
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Juan Cole, 24 May 2011
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s high dudgeon over the world community’s demand that Israel return more or less to ’1967 borders’ plays to two audiences, his domestic constituency among far rightwing ‘Greater Israel’ parties intent on usurping Palestinian land, and his American constituency among the third or so of US Jews who oppose trading land for peace.
For the rest of us in the US, being yoked to Netanyahu’s angry expansionism is like being forced to date Charlie Sheen. It won’t do our own reputation any good, and it won’t rescue him from his self-destructiveness.
The ’1967′ borders are actually those that obtained before Israel launched its 1967 ‘Six-Day War’ on Syria, Jordan and Egypt. (There is no doubt that Israel launched this war, and that its aggressiveness with Syria in the previous six months contributed mightily to the tensions that led to it.)
The reason Israel has to go back to 1967 borders is that the annexation of territory from a neighbor through warfare is illegal according to the United Nations Charter, which is a treaty to which Israel and the United States are both signatories. ‘Greater Israel’ apologists attempt to get out of this difficulty by saying that countries used to conquer land away from their neighbors all the time. This is a bogus argument, since countries used to do a lot of things, including sponsor the slave trade; Britain even insisted on China allowing the sale of opium in the early 19th century. The world changed when World War II ended and the countries of the world established the United Nations to forestall any recrudescence of Axis techniques of conquest and rule. If Israel does not believe in the UN Charter, it should renounce its UN membership.
It is not just the UN Charter. The Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid a power occupying enemy territory in war time from annexing it or in any way changing the life ways of its people.
Another bogus argument the Greater Israel expansionists trot out is that the UN Charter only forbids the acquisition of territory from other countries, and the Palestinians did not have a country, and so they are fair game. This argument is morally despicable, since the Israelis made the Palestinians stateless, thwarting the intention of the League of Nations that Palestine become a state; and now they are using the abjectness and statelessness as an argument that Palestinians can be stolen from at will. But the argument is also incorrect. Both the League of Nations and the UN made it perfectly clear that they intended that the Palestinians have a state in the future, so in preventing this from happening the Israelis are defying international law. The 1947 UN Partition Plan, the legitimacy of which the Israeli government says it recognizes, awarded Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestinians. So it is not true that these territories are no-man’s land or that there is no legal framework for their people’s existence, such that anyone could enslave them or expropriate them at will.
Netanyahu’s argument for not going back to 1967 borders is that it is inconvenient. He says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. This assertion is a logical fallacy, known as special pleading. You can’t launch a war and annex your neighbor’s territory because you fear that your own presents security challenges. Lots of countries are unhappy with their borders. Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990 in part because he felt that the British had erred in not giving modern Iraq a deep water port, which made Iraq ‘indefensible’ and put it at an economic disadvantage. Pakistan believes that its failure to secure the headwaters of the Indus Valley rivers in Kashmir in 1947 puts it at a permanent disadvantage vis-a-vis India and makes the country overly vulnerable (‘indefensible’). Netanyahu’s immoral argument that a country just has to take by main force whatever it feels will make it more secure is astonishing and is a standing danger to world peace if it were taken seriously by other countries.
International law forbids Israel to colonize the West Bank– not only the UN Charter but also the Geneva Conventions of 1948.
But beyond the specious character of Netanyahu’s rhetoric (according to which it would have been perfectly all right for George W. Bush to annex Iraq to the United States), the fact is that the whole tiff over ’1967 borders’ is a smokescreen for Israeli expansionism. The settler movement could put down settlements in much of the sparsely populated south of Israel proper with no problem. Instead, they insist on taking Palestinian land. They are not colonizing the West Bank only to make it more ‘secure’ (they are making it less so), but rather out of greed, ambition, and expansionism. It is not about defense, it is about offense.
(Courtesy the BBC)
The Likud Party led by Netanyahu does not believe in allowing the Palestinians to have a state, and does not believe in withdrawing from the Occupied Territories. This obstinate stance and commitment to undermining the international rule of law is why there is no point in ‘engaging’ the Likud with ‘ compromises.’ Netanyahu led the charege against the Oslo Peace process pursued by then PM Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s, and when Rabin was assassinated and Netanyahu came briefly to power he did whatever he could to destroy the peace process. He admitted this obstructionism on tape:
Juan Cole
Netanyahu rudely lectured President Obama in front of the cameras that the Palestinian desire to see some of the refugees expelled from their homes by the Israelis in 1948 ‘isn’t going to happen’ and he urged Obama to frankly tell the Palestinians that it isn’t going to happen. But he may as well also have instructed Obama to tell the Palestinians that the two state solution is dead.
Israel by now has not only planted colonies all over the West Bank and moved hundreds of thousands of people in, but it has secretly withdrawn residency rights from 140,000 Palestinians. The ‘separation barrier’ removed another 12 percent of Palestinian territory. No one can look at a map of Gaza and the West Bank as they actually exist and see a viable state that could protect the rights of its citizens (the point of a state). Israel keeps announcing new settlements or expansions of existing ones on Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu is saying ‘no’ to peace, ‘no’ to negotiations, ‘no’ to dignity and rights for Palestinians for generations to come.
Ben Franklin said that ‘Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.’ Netanyahu’s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will one day regret that he slapped away the hand of help and the good will of Barack Obama in favor of a stubborn and greedy Israeli expansionism.
The most likely outcome of Israel’s present course is a one state solution, achieved over decades, with much heartbreak and violence and ruined lives in the meantime. The Jews of Israel will likely end up like the Maronite Christians of Lebanon. France created Lebanon in 1920 for a then Christian majority, but Christian out-migration and rapid Muslim population growth reduced the Maronites to only about 22 percent of the population today if we count children. Likewise, Israeli Jews have already lost their majority among first-graders in what was Mandate Palestine in favor of Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis. Current demographic trends will likely produce an Israel that is a third Arab by 2030 and that is not even counting the Occupied Territories. The instability in the Arab world and the Greater Middle East, which is growing, could well over time increase Jewish out-migration (out of sheer nervousness) so that it outstrips in-migration of Jews. I can’t see a way for Israel to escape this demographic and geopolitical fate and remain viable as a nation-state. Plans on the Israeli right to denaturalize and expel the 1.5 million Palestinian-Israelis are unrealistic and do not reckon with the likely backlash from the Arab world, which won’t remain weak and abject forever. (We can already see glimmerings of a new, more assertive Egypt).
The course Netanyahu is charting will harm the United States in so many ways they are hard to count. But he is also digging the grave of his own vision of a Jewish state.
Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). You can visit his site at http://www.juancole.com/
President Barack Obama May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Sami Jamil Jadallah, 24 May 2011
As was expected President Barack Obama’s speech this weekend at AIPAC was an unconditional surrender to AIPAC, to Bibi Netanyahu and Israel. He gave up the US presidency in favor of his candidacy for re-election.
Barak Obama did not come to AIPAC to convince the American Jewish leaders and community and argue the case of the US resolve and leadership in settling the Middle East conflict based on international laws and international conventions, a conflict that has cost the US and its tax payers so dearly.
Barack Obama came to convince his friends and sponsors within the American Jewish community he is their candidate and their man in the White House now and in the future, and the only way he can convince such a group is to submit his presidency and the US total and unconditional surrender. He surrendered the US world leadership and prestige coming close to declaring his allegiance to Israel and ahead of the US like so many in the US Congress.
Few days before Bibi Netanyahu came to the White House not to listen but to dictate, and came to the White House to tell the man of the White House, when it comes to Congress, he (Bibi) is the “Boss” and Bibi has what it takes to make the re-election of Obama an impossible task. Bibi enjoys so much wide spread support among the American Knesset and the Jewish community and the Evangelical Christians Rights, support he does not enjoy in his home country of Israel.
Barack Obama had to be careful in what he says, let alone what he does since the coming months are so critical to his reelection and campaign financing. He could not alienate the most powerful community and group in the US, a group that makes or break the hopes and dreams of any political candidate. They promise money in return for blood and total unconditional surrender of the US in support of Israel’s agenda, its wars, its settlements, its nuclear weapons and its constant violations of international laws.
He spoke of the borders of 67 yet in the next statement he spoke of “facts on the grounds” facts that were there in violation of international laws, in violation of US laws and in violations of the Geneva Convention. The “Demographic” changes he mentions were deliberate acts of aggression resulting in so much land and water theft and resulting in the “expulsion and ethnic cleansing” and denial of residency for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, an expulsion denial of rights that comes close to the 700,000 Palestinians who were forced to exile by the power of gun in 48.
Since 67 Israel took “Jewish legal” measure to expropriate land and ethnically cleanse people with the support of the very power gun and money supplied by the US and a legal and political cover the US only the US is always ready to provide.
Barack Obama did not speak of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes and land to Jewish Settlements and ethnic cleansing, who lost their homes and lands to “Jewish Roads only” and who lost the rights to reside in their own home towns and cities and who sees their homes destroyed and demolish as a matter of routine.
Obama of 2011 was no different from Obama of 2008 when he spoke of unconditional support of Israel at AIPAC -08 where he promised ”Jerusalem” to remain the undivided capital of Israel now he is promising half of what remains of historic Palestine.
This time around, President Obama did not only deliver the US unconditional surrender, he also surrendered the rights of all Palestinians as well. He surrendered their rights of return, their rights to East Jerusalem, their rights of self-determination and their rights to their water, land and property. He made sure all of these rights are subject to negotiation with Israel and its veto.
Mr. Obama even went further, by making sure the US will do all it can to bock any efforts by the PLO to bring the issue of “recognition” before the United Nation, not that the UN vote will end the Jewish Occupation of 43 years, or enforce the Rights of Return or the rights to East Jerusalem, but the very idea that the US will block and discourage such efforts goes beyond the total surrender of the US and Palestinians to Israel.
Obama even threw the American Jewish community as part of the deal. He surrendered this “community” accepting its loyalty and commitment to Israel as the state of the “Jewish People”. By recognizing and accepting Israel’s demands that Israel as state for “the Jewish People” he ceded the rights of US citizens loyalty to a foreign country, accepting the troubling ideas and practice of double loyalty and dual citizenship, that Israelis is not only a state of Israeli citizens but a state for the American Jews as well. Perhaps a first step in the release of Jonathan Pollard.
Barack Obama broke the “envelop” by asking a “disarmed” Palestinian state broken down to small canton, surrounded by armed Jewish settlements from all sides to guarantees the safety and security of the most powerful military in the Middle East, with hundreds of F-15s and F-16s and F-36, and Kfir fighters, hundreds of AH-64 D Apatche, AH-1 attach Cobra, dozens of Sa’ar 4.5 Class Missile boats and Sa’ar 5 class Corvettes, thousands of Mirkava tanks and APCs, thousands of M109 self propelled Howitzers, Soltan M-71 Howitzers, Caterpillar D9 Armored bulldozer ( specifically for demolition of Palestinian homes), submarines equipped with nuclear armed missiles, and hundreds of unmanned aircrafts capable of hitting Iran, and an army that can muster some 700,000 well trained and well equipped in days, with a history of carrying attacks as far as Tunis, Baghdad, Syria ( near the Turkish borders) with over 150 nuclear weapons and Mr. Obama has the “Chutzpa” to demand from the poor defenseless Palestinians who could not even fend against attacks by armed Jewish thugs and settlers to guarantee the safety and security for this poor defenseless “Jewish state”.
The Palestinian people should not expect more from Obama or any future US president, certainly not the UN or UNSC, and should take the matter in their hands making sure that the proposed two state solution is null and void and work toward a One State, One People as the only option ahead.
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.
Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah