Turkish Forum

Tag: The Zionist lobby

  • AIPAC and the Push Toward War

    AIPAC and the Push Toward War

    Robert

    ROBERT WRIGHT

    Late last week, amid little fanfare, Senators Joseph Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Robert Casey introduced a resolution that would move America further down the path toward war with Iran.

    The good news is that the resolution hasn’t been universally embraced in the Senate. As Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, the resolution has “provoked jitters among Democrats anxious over the specter of war.” The bad news is that, as Kampeas also reports, “AIPAC is expected to make the resolution an ‘ask’ in three weeks when up to 10,000 activists culminate its annual conference with a day of Capitol Hill lobbying.”

    In standard media accounts, the resolution is being described as an attempt to move the “red line”–the line that, if crossed by Iran, could trigger a US military strike. The Obama administration has said that what’s unacceptable is for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. This resolution speaks instead of a “nuclear weapons capability.” In other words, Iran shouldn’t be allowed to get to a point where, should it decide to produce a nuclear weapon, it would have the wherewithal to do so.

    By itself this language is meaninglessly vague. Does “capability” mean the ability to produce a bomb within two months? Two years? If two years is the standard, Iran has probably crossed the red line already. (So should we start bombing now?) Indeed, by the two-year standard, Iran might well be over the red line even after a bombing campaign–which would at most be a temporary setback, and would remove any doubt among Iran’s leaders as to whether to build nuclear weapons, and whether to make its nuclear program impervious to future American and Israeli bombs. What do we do then? Invade?

    In other words, if interpreted expansively, the “nuclear weapons capability” threshold is a recipe not just for war, but for ongoing war–war that wouldn’t ultimately prevent the building of a nuclear weapon without putting boots on the ground. And it turns out that the authors of this resolution want “nuclear weapons capability” interpreted very expansively.

    The key is in the way the resolution deals with the question of whether Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium, as it’s been doing for some time now. The resolution defines as an American goal “the full and sustained suspension” of uranium enrichment by Iran. In case you’re wondering what the resolution’s prime movers mean by that: In a letter sent to the White House on the same day the resolution was introduced, Lieberman, Graham and ten other senators wrote, “We would strongly oppose any proposal that recognizes a ‘right to enrichment’ by the current regime or for [sic] a diplomatic endgame in which Iran is permitted to continue enrichment on its territory in any form.”

    This notwithstanding the fact that 1) enrichment is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; (2) a sufficiently intrusive monitoring system can verify that enrichment is for peaceful purposes; (3) Iran’s right to enrich its own uranium is an issue of strong national pride. In a pollpublished in 2010, after sanctions had already started to bite, 86 percent of Iranians said Iran should not “give up its nuclear activities regardless of the circumstances.” And this wasn’t about building a bomb; most Iranians said Iran’s nuclear activities shouldn’t include producing weapons.

    Even Dennis Ross–who has rarely, in his long career as a Mideast diplomat, left much daylight between his positions and AIPAC’s, and who once categorically opposed Iranian enrichment–now realizes that a diplomatic solution may have to include enrichment. Last week in a New York Timesop-ed, he said that, contrary to pessimistic assessments, it may still be possible to get a deal that “uses intrusive inspections and denies or limits uranium enrichment [emphasis added]…”

    The resolution plays down its departure from current policy by claiming that there have been “multiple” UN resolutions since 2006 demanding the “sustained” suspension of uranium. But the UN resolutions don’t actually use that term. The UN has demanded suspension as a confidence-building measure that could then lead to, as one resolution puts it, a “negotiated solution that guarantees Iran’s nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes.” And various Security Council members who voted on these resolutions have made it clear that Iranian enrichment of uranium can be part of this scenario if Iran agrees to sufficiently tight monitoring.

    Indeed, that Iran’s right to enrich uranium could be recognized under those circumstances is, Hillary Clinton has said, “the position of the international community, along with the United States.” If the Lieberman-Graham-Casey resolution guides US policy, says George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, that would “preclude” fulfillment of the UN resolutions and isolate the US from the international coalition that backed them.

    The Congressional resolution goes beyond the UN resolutions in another sense. It demands an end to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Greg Thielmann of the Arms Control Association notes that, “Even after crushing Iraq in the first Gulf War, the international coalition only imposed a 150-kilometer range ceiling on Saddam’s ballistic missiles. A demand to eliminate all ballistic missiles would be unprecedented in the modern era–removing any doubt among Iranians that the United States was interested in nothing less than the total subjugation of the country.”

    On the brighter side: Maybe it’s a good sign that getting significant Democratic buy-in for this resolution took some strong-arming. According to Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now, the resolution got 15 Democratic supporters only “after days of intense AIPAC lobbying, particularly of what some consider ‘vulnerable’ Democrats (vulnerable in terms of being in races where their pro-Israel credentials are being challenged by the candidate running against them).” What’s more, even as AIPAC was playing this hardball, the bill’s sponsors still had to tone down some particularly threatening language in the resolution.

    But, even so, the resolution defines keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapons “capability” as being in America’s “vital national interest,” which is generally taken as synonymous with “worth war.” And, though this “sense of Congress” resolution is nonbinding, AIPAC will probably seek unanimous Senate consent, which puts pressure on a president. Friedman says this “risks sending a message that Congress supports war and opposes a realistic negotiated solution or any de facto solution short of stripping Iran of even a peaceful nuclear capacity.”

    What’s more, says Friedman, the non-binding status may be temporary. “Often AIPAC-backed Congressional initiatives start as non-binding language (in a resolution or a letter) and then show up in binding legislation. Once members of Congress have already signed on to a policy in non-binding form, it is much harder for them to oppose it when it shows up later in a bill that, if passed, will have the full force of law.”

    No wonder Democrats who worry about war have the “jitters.”

    Robert Wright is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

    www.theatlantic.com, FEB 21 2012

  • AMERICAN TRAGEDY

    AMERICAN TRAGEDY

    Likudnic in the White House

    GILAD ATZMON

    Ynet’s Washington reporter, Yitzhak Ben – Horin,  produced last night a clear and succinct reading of Obama’s recent UN General Assembly  address:

    “Likudnic in the White House.”

    “Netanyahu could not have written it better.”

    “Obama at this point, is in line with the Likud party.”

    “Obama is a pro-Israel president …Since January 2009, he provided Israel with all its needs both in diplomacy and in terms of security”

    Obama is not performing too well in the polls. He clearly needs the Jewish Lobby on his side. The American president ‘provided’ yesterday and the lobby was quick to react- “Israel has no better friend in the world today,” wrote the president of the National Council of Jewish Democrats, David Harris.

    According to Ynet,  hours before his UN General Assembly Address Obama sought to ensure that prospective Jewish voters pay close attention to his speech.

    “Three of Obama’s aides held a conference call with the president’s Jewish supporters and community leaders. The advisers, all Jewish themselves, asked the supporters to “spread the word” that Obama will give a pro-Israel speech which reflects his own genuine positions and implored them to pay close attention to the president’s UN address.”

    The three Jewish advisers  “stressed that the Republicans intentionally distort Obama’s statements to portray him as an anti-Israel president, when in fact their arguments are baseless.”

    If anyone was foolish enough to believe that America could ever be a broker for peace in the Middle East, the truth is now unavoidable. American political world is clearly hijacked by a foreign lobby that represents foreign interests. America cannot rescue itself. What we see in front of our eyes is basically a tragedy.

    Greek tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods. The American tragedy contains the same elements. America has regarded itself as a ‘noble hero’ since its creation, ‘hubris’ is also far from being foreign to American culture. Americas’ fate has been written on the wall for more than a while. And what about the Gods, can you guess who the Gods are? I think that Obama and his party knew very well whom they were trying to appease last night. They know very well who their Gods are because they shamelessly mix with them at least once a year at AIPAC annual gathering.

    However, Obama and his ‘advisers’ maybe mistaken here. Their ‘Gods’ are not stupid at all, they grasp what Obama is up to, Ben Horin wrote last night, they understand what ‘2nd term’ means in terms of Israeli politics. They remember, for instance, that during the election campaign in 2000, George Bush promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but once re-elected he was the man who pushed Sharon to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. They remember that the same George Bush was also the president who sided with Abu Mazen, and declared that negotiations with the Palestinians should be based on 49 armistice lines.

    If Obama thinks that the ‘Gods’ are now beside him, he is deluded.

    Obama made a grave personal mistake yesterday. But it is Americans, Israelis and Palestinians that will pay the price. What we see here is a classic tragedy, for America doesn’t posses the political power to save itself from itself.

    The only question you may want to ask yourself at this stage is how long will it take for America to emancipate itself from its ‘Gods’.

    www.gilad.co.uk, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

  • Is Rupert Murdoch ignorant or an agent of Zionist deception?

    Is Rupert Murdoch ignorant or an agent of Zionist deception?

    Rupert MurdochIn a recent speech at an ADL (Anti-Defamation League) dinner, Rupert Murdoch, arguably the most influential mainstream media chief on Planet Earth, made some extraordinary statements which must be challenged. But first it’s necessary for us all to be clear about what ADL’s role is.

    Its proclaimed objective is to “fight anti-Semitism”. In reality its main purpose under the leadership of Abe Foxman is to smear, harass, silence and preferably destroy those of all faiths and none who are critical of Zionism in action – critical of Israel’s policies in general and its contempt for international law in particular; and critical of the awesome power of the Zionist lobby, in America especially.

    In his speech Murdoch said his own perspective on the evil of anti-Semitism was “simple”. He put it this way (my emphasis added):

    “We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews. For the first decades after Israel’s founding, this war was conventional in nature.The goal was straightforward – to use military force to overrun Israel.”

    That was Murdoch’s carefully understated way of endorsing Zionism’s assertion that for the first decades of its life Israel lived in danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. As I document in detail through the three volumes of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Israel’s existence was never, ever, in danger from any combination of Arab force. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most (in America and Western Europe) with presenting its aggression as self-defense and itself as the victim when, actually, it was and is the oppressor.

    The main event during the period in which Murdoch asserted that the Arabs were trying to “overrun” Israel was the 1967 war. Zionism’s story of it, which the mainstream media still peddles to this day, is that Israel went to war either because the Arabs attacked first or were intending to attack. Both, the either and the or, are Zionist propaganda nonsense. It was a war of Israeli aggression.

    I don’t expect Murdoch to pay any attention to what the Gentile me has to say on the subject, but if he is not an agent of Zionist deception (i.e. if he is merely ignorant), he ought to consider what various Israeli leaders have said. I quote them in America Takes Sides, War With Nasser Act II and the Creation of Greater Israel, Chapter 1 of Volume Three the American edition of my book, which is sub-titled Conflict Without End?

    I preface the quotes of Israeli leaders with this observation.

    “If the statement that the Arabs were not intending to attack Israel and that the existence of the Jewish state was not in danger was only that of a goy, it could be dismissed by Zionists as anti-Semitic conjecture. In fact the truth the statement represents was admitted by some of the key Israeli players – after the war, of course. Before we look at what actually happened in 1967 and why, here is a short summary of some pertinent, post-war Israeli confessions.”

    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 which 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-Hamishmarcontained 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.”

    On 4 April 1972, General Haim Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as chief of staff, was quoted in Ma’ariv as follows: “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six-Days war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

    In the same Israeli newspaper on the same day, General Ezer Weizman, Chief of Operations during the war and a nephew of Chaim Weizman, was quoted as saying: “There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”

    In the spring of 1972, General Matetiyahu Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war and one of 12 members of Israel’s General Staff, addressed a political literary club in Tel Aviv. He said: “The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war.” In a radio debate Peled said: “Israel was never in real danger and there was no evidence that Egypt had any intention of attacking Israel.” He added that “Israeli intelligence knew that Egypt was not prepared for war.”

    In the same program Chaim Herzog (former DMI, future Israeli Ambassador to the UN and President of his state) said: “There was no danger of annihilation. Neither Israeli headquarters nor the Pentagon – as the memoirs of President Johnson proved – believed in this danger.”

    On 3 June 1972 Peled was even more explicit in an article of his own for Le Monde. He wrote: “All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our ‘defense’ against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analyzing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.”

    The preference of some generals for truth-telling after the event provoked something of a debate in Israel, but it was short-lived. If some Israeli journalists had had their way, the generals would have kept their mouths shut. Weizman was one of those approached with the suggestion that he and others who wanted to speak out should “not exercise their inalienable right to free speech lest they prejudice world opinion and the Jewish diaspora against Israel.”

    It is not surprising that debate in Israel was shut down before it led to some serious soul-searching about the nature of the state and whether it should continue to live by the lie as well as the sword; but it is more than remarkable, I think, that the mainstream Western media continues to prefer the convenience of the Zionist myth to the reality of what happened in 1967 and why. When reporters and commentators have need today to make reference to the Six Days War, they still tell it like the Zionists said it was in 1967 rather than how it really was. Obviously there are still limits to how far the mainstream media is prepared to go in challenging the Zionist account of history, but it could also be that lazy journalism is a factor in the equation.

    For those journalists, lazy or not, who might still have doubts about who started the Six Days War, here’s a quote from what Prime Minister Begin said in an unguarded, public moment in 1982. “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.”

    My own favourite Israeli quote is the one I use to draw the Prologue to Volume One of my book to a conclusion. In 1980 I had a number of conversations with the best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence, Major General (then retired) Shlomo Gazit. Over coffee one morning I said to him: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a myth. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger.” He replied: “The trouble with us Israelis is that we’ve become the victims of our own propaganda.”

    In his speech to the ADL dinner, Murdoch said that phase two of the “ongoing war against the Jews” (after the failure to “overrun” Israel by force) was “terrorism” He seems to have no idea of reality on this front either.

    One of a number of summary truths about terrorism is this. In Palestine that became Israel, it was the Zionists who turned to terrorism first – to drive out the occupying British and then the indigenous Arabs.

    Murdoch spoke of the terrorists targeting Israelis at home and broad – “from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada.” Fact: All but two of the Israeli athletes in Munich were killed by German security forces after Israeli Defense Minister Dayan insisted, against Prime Minister Golda Meir’s own best judgement, on a shoot-out to prevent a negotiated end to the hostage drama. Fact: The second intifada, which PLO Chairman Arafat was doing his best to prevent, was provoked by Ariel Sharon to improve his prospects of becoming prime minister by seeing off a challenge from Netanyahu.

    A second summary truth about Palestinian terrorism is this. The Palestinians were not and are not “at war with the Jews”. Black September’s Munich operation, for example, was terrorism for a public relations purpose – to draw the attention of the world to the fact that the Palestinians existed, were occupied and oppressed and in need of some justice.

    A summary truth about general Arab and wider Muslim terrorism is this. It is primarily a response of the weak and oppressed to Israel’s arrogance of power and insufferable self-righteousness; to the impotence, corruption and repression of Arab and other Muslim regimes which are correctly regarded by their masses as little more than puppets of America-and-Zionism; and to the deadly double-standard of Western foreign policy – in particular its unconditional support for Israel right or wrong. (In at least one respect the Arab and other Muslim masses have much more wisdom than Western leaders. They, Arab and Muslims masses, know that unconditional support for Israel right or wrong is not in anybody’s best interests, not even those of Israel’s Jews).

    According to Murdoch “the war against the Jews” has now entered a new phase. “This,” he said, “is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere – the media… multinational organizations … NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.”

    It is true that in the eyes of many if not most peoples of the world (and probably many of their governments behind closed doors) Israel is increasingly being seen as a pariah state. But that’s a consequence of Israel’s policies and actions, war crimes and all.

    What Murdoch sees as the rise of anti-Semitism is, in fact, the rise of anti-Israelism. The danger for the Jews of the world is that it will be transformed into violent anti-Semitism at a foreseeable point in the future if the Zionist state is not called and held to account for its past crimes and is allowed by the major powers to go on committing new ones.

    It is a fact that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, most Jews were opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise. One of their fears was that Zionism would one day provoke anti-Semitism if it was allowed by the big powers to have its way. As I never tire of writing and saying, this fear was given a fresh airing by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving Director of Military Intelligence. In 1986 he published a remarkable book, Israel’s Fateful Hour. It contains this warning (my emphasis added):

    Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.

    Nearly a quarter of a century on I think it can and should be said that Israel’s “misconduct” has become the prime factor in the equation that could transform anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism.

    If I had the opportunity to address Mr. Murdoch directly, I would say to him the following. If you really care about the Jews (I mean the Jews as people as opposed to their money), you would put your media empire at the service of the truth of history.

    I would also tell him that when I joined ITN (Independent Television News) as a very young reporter many years ago, its great editor-in-chief, Geoffrey Cox, gave me the mission statement in one short sentence. “Our job is to help keep democracy alive.”

    I would then say to Murdoch that my charge today is (generally speaking) that the mainstream media has betrayed democracy. And I would add, “You, sir, are the greatest betrayer, traitor, of them all.”

    http://www.alanhart.net/is-rupert-murdoch-ignorant-or-an-agent-of-zionist-deception/#more-1309, October 30, 2010

  • Zionism Needs Israeli Jews To Feel Frightened: Alan Hart

    Zionism Needs Israeli Jews To Feel Frightened: Alan Hart

    logoAlan Hart is an indispensable name in journalism. Unquestionably, he has been one of the most influential British journalists with an expertise in the Middle East affairs. A former BBC Panorama presenter, Hart was a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. During his fruitful career, Hart interviewed several prominent leaders including Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, Jordan’s King Hussein and Egyptian Presidents Nasser and Sadat.

    He was a media correspondent for the Independent Television Network and has covered the Vietnam War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well.

    He is a vocal critic of Israel and its expansionistic policies and has repeatedly reprimanded the Arab leaders for their implicit complicity with Israel in its suppression of the Palestinian nation.

    Alan Hart joined me in an exclusive, in-depth interview to explore the prospect of Israel-Palestinian conflict, the roots of Zionist lobby’s influence over the U.S. Congress, the 9/11 conspiracy theories and the possibility of a U.S.-directed military strike against Iran.

    Kourosh Ziabari: In your recent article “Zionism and Peace are Incompatible” you reach a point where you state “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 it really the case that Israel possesses an uncontrollable, disproportionate power which enables it to violate the international law and enjoy immunity from being held accountable before the international community? What’s the source of this unwarrantable power and influence?

    Alan Hart: Let’s start with Reality Number One. There are two sets of rules for the behavior of nations, one for all the countries of the world minus Israel, the other exclusively for Israel. This double-standard is the mother and father of Arab and other Muslim hurt, humiliation and anger. Put another way, this double-standard is the best recruiting sergeant for violent Islamic fundamentalism.

    In the story of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel as I tell it fully documented in my latest book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the moment when the major powers created the double-standard can be more or less pinpointed. In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, and because it was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense, the major powers, through the UN Security Council, should have said to Israel something like the following: “You are not to build any settlements on newly occupied Arab land. If you do, you’ll be demonstrating your contempt for international law. In this event the international community will declare Israel to be an outlaw state and subject it to sanctions.”

    If something like that riot act had been read to Israel, there probably would have been peace many, many years ago. For background let me briefly explain why.

    The pragmatic Arafat was reluctantly reconciled to the reality of Israel’s existence inside its pre-1967 borders as far back as 1969. In his gun and olive branch address to the UN General Assembly on 13 November 1974 he said so by obvious implication. Thereafter he put his credibility with his leadership colleagues and his people, and his life, on the line to get a mandate for unthinkable compromise with Israel. He got the mandate at the end of 1979 when the Palestine National Council, then the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side, voted by 296 votes to 4 to endorse his two-state policy – a solution which any rational Israeli government and people would have accepted with relief. What Arafat needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. He eventually got a probable one, Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly what he was doing – killing the peace process. The more it became clear that Israel’s leaders were not interested in a genuine two-state solution for which Arafat had prepared the ground on his side, the more his credibility with his own people suffered.

    Eisenhower was the first and the last American president to contain Zionism. After Israel had secretly colluded with France and Britain in the 1956 invasion of Eygpt to overthrow Nasser and take back the Suez Canal which he had nationalized, Israel’s leaders tried to insist on conditions for Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai. Eisenhower confronted them by going over the heads of Congress in an address to the nation. In the course of it he said this:

    “Israel insists on firm guarantees as a condition to withdrawing its forces of invasion. If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and gaining national advantage… If the UN once admits that international disputes can be settled using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope for establishing a real world order.”

    As I note in a chapter of my book titled Goodbye to the Security Council’s Integrity, after the 1967 war there simply was not the Eisenhower-like political will to oblige Israel to behave like a normal state – i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN.

    What, really, explains this lack of political will – in 1967 and still today?

    I used to believe the short answer was the stranglehold on American policy for the Middle East of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress. There’s no mystery about the prime source of the lobby’s power. It’s money to fund election campaigns. If you were an American and announced that you were going to run for Congress or any other significant public office, you’d be approached by the lobby. It would tell you the policy position on Israel and then offer you a choice. If you supported Israel, you would receive all the campaign funding you needed to defeat your opponent. If you were not interested, the funding would go to your opponent to enable him or her to defeat you. That’s an over-simplification of how the system works but it’s also the essence of the reality.

    Incidentally, I do NOT blame the Zionist lobby for playing the game the way it does. It is only playing according to The System’s rules. I blame America’s pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders. It just so happens that the Zionist lobby in association with its Christian fundamentalist allies is one of the highest bidders, if not the highest. If I had the opportunity to advise an American president, I would say to him or her: “The best thing you could do for your country is to give it some real democracy by putting an end to your corrupt, pork-barrel politics.”

    Today, and as I indicated in my recent article from you quoted, Zionism and Peace Are Incompatible, I am beginning to think that the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby may not be the complete explanation of the lack of political will. Because it is obviously not in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel right or wrong and making enemies of 1.4 billion Muslims by so doing, the question I am asking myself is this: Could it be that all American presidents are frightened of confronting Zionism because they 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?

    That question was provoked by my recall of a statement made to me in a BBC Panorama interview by Golda Meir when she was prime minister. At a point I interrupted her to say: “I just want to be sure that I understand what you’re saying… You are saying that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the world down with it?” Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, she replied: “Yes! That’s exactly what I am saying.”

    In those days Panorama, the BBC’s flagship current affairs program, was transmitted on a Monday evening at 8.10pm. By 10.0pm, The Times, then a seriously good newspaper not the Murdoch product it is today, had changed its lead editorial to quote what Golda had said to me. It then added its own opinion. “We had better believe her.”

    Exactly what I am saying comes down to this. Even if an American president was free to read the riot act to Israel, if only to best protect America’s own real interests, it does not follow that its leaders would say: “Okay. We’ll do what you want.” In my view it’s possible, even probable, that they would say: “Mr. President, go to hell. If you push us too far, we’ll create mayhem in the region.”

    KZ: The pro-Palestinian journalist and activist Jeffrey Blankfort told me in a recent interview about the efforts made by the previous United State presidents to hold back the influence of Israel and Zionist lobby over the U.S. Congress. He cited the confrontation of George Bush Sr. with the Zionist network in 1991 and 1992 when he denied Israel its request for $10 billion in loan guarantees; however, Mr. Bush was eventually forced to surrender and endorse the loan. Will the same fate await President Obama who is said to be determined to put forward a proposal for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in the Security Council?

    AH: About President Obama let me first of all say this. I do not believe as many of his anti-Zionist critics do that he came into office as a Zionist stooge, programmed to do Zionism’s bidding. If that was the case, why would he have challenged Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby over the settlements and set himself up to be humiliated? My view is that Obama meant well but was too naïve and inexperienced for the job and was therefore bound to become a prisoner of the Zionist lobby. I also think it is impossible for any new, first term president to be completely aware of the full extent of the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress until he is in the Oval Office trying to get things done.

    As I write in Is Peace Possible?, the Epilogue of Volume Three of the American edition of my book, I think there was a reason why Obama moved so quickly to try to get a Middle East peace process going.

    He knew something that all American presidents know about when serious initiatives for peace can and cannot be taken. I know what that something is because a president told me a few months after events had denied him a second term in office. Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to break or try to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress on matters to do with Israel/Palestine.

    The first window is during the first nine months of his first term because after that the soliciting of funds for the mid-term elections begins. Presidents don’t have to worry on their own account about funds for the mid-term elections, but with their approach no president can do or say anything that would cost his party seats in Congress. The second window of opportunity is the last year of his second term if he has one. In that year, because he can’t run for a third term, no president has a personal need for election campaign funds or organized votes.

    As things are there’s a question mark over whether Obama will get a second term, but with the mid-term elections are out of the way, he might have one more opportunity to put some real pressure on Israel – if he has the will. There has been talk of a Palestinian and presumably wider Arab initiative to have the Security Council recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If such a resolution does find its way to the Security Council, Obama could do what American Presidents always do when resolutions are not to Israel’s liking – veto it. But he could also say and do nothing and effectively let the resolution pass. What then?

    In Ha’aretz on 20 October, Israeli commentator Aluf Benn offered this answer. A Security Council decision to recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and Gaza “would deem Israel an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures against Israel.” In Aluff Benn’s view the international movement to boycott Israel would “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.”

    My guess is that such a resolution will not find its way to the Security Council because the Arab regimes are too frightened of offending Zionism too much; but if it does, Obama will have his last chance to demonstrate that, as it relates to American efforts for peace in the Middle East, his “Yes, we can” has not become “No, we can’t.”

    KZ. Arab leaders have shown signs that they’re willing to renormalize their ties with Israel. Politicians in some of the Arab states have openly negotiated with high-ranking Israeli officials and invited them to their events. What are the benefits of this renormalization for the Arab leaders while anger and hatred against the Israeli regime is growing in the Arab world on a daily basis? How can the Arab leaders disregard the crowds of people who storm into streets en masse to protest the aggressive and belligerent policies of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza?

    AH: Most Arabs quietly despise their leaders but I’m not aware that they have stormed into the streets to protest against Israel’s policies. I would re-phrase what I think is the essence of your question in this way: “Do Arab leaders care about what happens to the occupied and oppressed Palestinians?”

    My short answer is “No”. My longer answer is this.

    The real history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel invites the conclusion that the Arab regimes, more by default than design in my view, betrayed the Palestinians. And there’s no mystery about the nature of this betrayal.

    When the Palestine file was closed by Israel’s 1948 victory on the battlefield and the armistice agreements, the divided and impotent Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as the Zionists and the major powers. It was that the file would remain closed for ever. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency.

    Nor is there any mystery about why the Arab regimes were at one with the Zionists and the major powers in hoping that there would never be a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism. They all knew that if there was, there would one day have to be a confrontation with Zionism; and nobody wanted that.

    When Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a few others lit the slow burning fire of the regeneration, it was the security services of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which took the lead in trying to put it out.

    Fast forward to 1982, Before Sharon sent the IDF all the way to Beirut to exterminate the PLO’s leadership and destroy its infrastructure, [Persian] Gulf Arab leaders met in secret, without advisers present, in order to agree a message to the Reagan administration. The message was to the effect that they would not intervene in any way when Sharon made his move. After that message was sent, one of the Arab leaders present, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, said to Arafat: “Be careful. You are going to ask for our help and it will not come.”

    And let me add this. Last year I had a private conversation in London with a major royal from the Arab world. I said to him, “Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your regimes are more frightened of their own masses than they are of offending Zionism and America”. He replied, “You’re right.” I also said to him, “If the Zionists do resort to a final round of ethnic cleaning to close the Palestine file, Arab leaders, behind closed doors, will give thanks and celebrate.” His reply was the same, “You’re right.”

    KZ. You’ve implied in your article “Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace” that if the Arab and Muslim leaders were effectively united against the United States whose ultimate objective is to consolidate and empower the quisling government of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel couldn’t have succeeded in imposing its expansionistic wills on the Palestinian nation and its chances for legitimizing a Greater Israel which goes beyond the borders of 1967 would have been insignificant; however, we don’t find such a solidarity among the Muslim and Arab leaders. except in the streets, as you put it. So what will be the fate of Palestinian nation? Should they surrender into what Israel has foreseen for them, that is displacement, homelessness and destruction?

    A: My point has never been that Arab and other Muslim leaders have to be “against” the U.S. The main difference at leadership level between the Jews and the Arabs is that the Jews know how to play the game of international politics and the Arabs don’t. Put another way, Zionism’s key players know how to play the cards they were dealt and Arab leaders don’t.

    Zionism’s five main cards were and are the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust for blackmail purposes; money (virtually unlimited funds) and the influence it buys; the organized Jewish vote in close American election races; overwhelming military superiority; and, more generally speaking, breathtakingly, brilliant organization and coordination.

    The Arabs had, and still have an ace that would have trumped all of Zionism’s cards: OIL.

    Imagine what would have happened in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war if Arab leaders had put their act together and sent one of their number secretly to Washington DC to say something very like the following to President Johnson behind closed doors: “If you don’t get Israel back behind its pre-war borders, we’ll turn off the oil taps.”

    If Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, he would have replied with something very like the following: “I can’t guarantee swift action on Jerusalem but give me two or three weeks for the rest.”

    If the Zionists had been in the Arab position, that is how they would have played their hand. And that is not pure speculation on my part. Over the years I have been told so by a number of Israeli leaders including former Directors of Military Intelligence.

    The main point is that if Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, they would not have had to turn off the oil taps. A secret, credible threat to do so would have been enough to cause Johnson or any president to put America’s own best interests first.

    Against that background the question to be asked today is something like this: What, in theory, could Arab leaders still do to give themselves a reasonable chance of countering Zionism’s influence on American policy for the Middle East?

    Prefaced by a summary statement of all the initiatives the Arabs including the Palestinians have taken for peace. They could threaten to

    – Sever their diplomatic relations with the U.S.
    – Withdraw their financial support for America’s broken economy
    – Turn off the oil taps

    Will Arab leaders ever learn how to play their cards if only to best protect their own longer term, real interests?

    I think not, and that takes me to the second part of your question – What will be the fate of the Palestinian nation and should the Palestinians surrender to Zionism’s will?

    The main point is that the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, the masses, are not going to surrender to Zionism’s will and accept crumbs from its table; the crumbs being three or four Bantustans on maximum 40% of the West Bank, which would not come even close to satisfying the Palestinians’ minimum demand and need for some justice but which they could call a state if they wished. It’s not totally impossible that under pressure from the Arab regimes and America, a quisling Palestinian leadership will seek to do such a deal with Israel, but it would be rejected by the masses; and probably the quisling Palestinian leader would be assassinated.

    The question arising is what will Zionism’s in-Israel leaders do when they conclude that with bombs and bullets and repressive measure of all kinds they cannot break the will of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians to continue their struggle? My guess is that they will create a pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever. If that happens, the West Bank will be soaked in blood, mostly Palestinian blood, and honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.

    It’s because I truly fear that is the most likely scenario that I think the priority of the international community should stopping the final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

    KZ: A growing number of internet writers and technical experts in America and many other countries believe that Israel was behind or implicated in the 9/11 attacks. Do you think this conspiracy theory is credible and, if you do, in what ways did 9/11 benefit Israel?

    A: In my view the starting point for any serious and honest discussion of 9/11 has to be this question: Did the impact of the planes and the heat of their burning fuel bring the Twin Towers down? If the answer is “Yes”, there’s no need for conspiracy theories. If the answer is “No”, the speculative question has to be – Who did it and how and why?

    My answer is “No”. In my analysis there’s enough evidence – visual, technical and scientific, and from eye-witnesses including fire fighters – to invite the conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven, were pre-wired for controlled demolition with nanothermite, the highest-tech military explosive.

    For context, the first observation I’d like to offer is that the mainstream Western media’s complicity in suppressing even questions and debate about what really happened on 9/11 is consistent. What I mean is that for the past 63 years – from the creation of the Zionist state of Israel mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing to the present the mainstream media have been complicit in the suppression of the truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. Put another way, the mainstream media have been content to peddle Zionism’s propaganda lies. The two biggest lies can be summed up in a very few words.

    The first is that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The truth, as I document in detail through the three volumes of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most – in the Western world and America especially – with presenting its aggression as self defense and itself as the victim when it was and is the oppressor.

    The second is that Israel “never had Arab partners for peace” That is complete nonsense. I’ve already mentioned Arafat’s pragmatism and work for peace to make the point, but here’s another example. From almost the moment he came to power in 1951, Eygpt’s President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel. He had secret exchanges with Israel’s foreign minister, Moshe Sharret, who was in my view the only completely sane Israeli leader of his time. For wanting to make peace with Nasser and the Arabs, Sharett was destroyed by Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion

    Prior to 9/11, the best single example of the mainstream media’s complicity in the suppression of the truth as it relates to conflict in the Middle East is Israel’s attack on the American spy ship, the USS Liberty, on 8th June 1967, the 4th day of the 6-Day war. (I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis, so I was in the Sinai desert at the time). That attack killed 37 Americans and seriously wounded more than 90 others. If things had gone according to the plan of the man who ordered that attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the Liberty would have been sunk with all hands on board, leaving nobody to tell the story of what really happened… If it had been an Arab/Muslim attack on an American vessel, it’s reasonable to speculate that America would have resorted to a military strike, if not war, on the country or countries it held responsible. What did President Johnson do? Out of fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, he ordered a cover-up which remains in force to this day. And the mainstream media went along with it, as it still does.

    Now to my summary thoughts on the possible, probable involvement of Israel’s Mossad in 9/11. I will offer you two scenarios – A or B.

    In scenario A it’s not impossible that 9/11 started out as an Arab/Muslim idea. But even if this was the case, Mossad would have had an inside track very quickly. From almost the moment of the Zionist state’s birth, Mossad put great effort into placing agents inside every Arab regime, every Arab military and security establishment and every Arab/Muslim liberation movement and terrorist group. Many of Mossad’s best and most effective agents were Moroccan and other North African Jews because they could pose most perfectly as Arabs. In a moment I’ll tell you the short story of Mossad’s penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group.

    In Scenario A the question is: Did Mossad tell anybody? My speculation is that it told some in the CIA and a few of Zionism’s neo-con associates, Jews and non-Jews, including Vice President Cheney I call him the real Doctor Strangelove and the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In this scenario Mossad could have asked, “What do we do about this?” And the answer could have been something like, “We’ll use it for the Pearl Harbor-like pretext we need.”

    In this scenario, 9/11, even if it started out as an Arab/Muslim idea, was a joint Israeli/Mossad and American/neo-con conspiracy.

    For background here’s a very short story about Mossad’s penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group. Abu Nidal was a member of Arafat’s Fatah but he broke with it when Arafat had come to terms with the reality of Israel’s existence and was preparing the ground on his side for compromise with Israel. The Abu Nidal group, based mainly in Iraq, was responsible for the assassinations, mainly in Europe, of more than 20 of Arafat’s emissaries who were telling Western governments behind closed doors that the Fatah-dominated PLO was serious about compromise with Israel. An investigation by Arafat and Abu Iyad, Fatah’s counter intelligence chief, subsequently revealed that Abu Nidal was an alcoholic – he consumed between one and two bottles of whisky a day, and for much of most days he was drunk, not sober. His number two was running the show and targeting those to be assassinated and directing the killing. Abu Nidal’s number two was a Mossad agent.

    It was, in fact, two Palestinian students in London who were activated by the Abu Nidal group to assassinate Israeli ambassador Argov. It was that assassination attempt in 1982 that gave Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon the pretext they needed to launch their invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut, for the purpose of exterminating the entire leadership of the PLO and destroying its infrastructure… Ambassador Argov survived and quite some time after the event, he indicated that he suspected Israel’s involvement (he could only have meant targeting) in the attempt to kill him.

    Scenario B has to be considered because it’s a fact that some of the Arab/Muslim plotters, actual or alleged, were under surveillance by various Western intelligence agencies for years before 9/11. The agencies who were tracking them as possible/probable terrorists included those of America, Germany and Israel.

    In this scenario it’s not impossible that the idea for 9/11 was put into the heads of possible/probable Arab/Muslim terrorists by Mossad agents.

    In this scenario, Mossad was actually running the show with key American neo-cons fixing things in America to make sure the attack was successful. From all that happened on the day, I’m not convinced that President Bush was in the pre-9/11 fixing loop. I think Cheney was most probably in control of the American executive oversight of what was essentially a Mossad false flag operation. Who else, for example, could have authorized the blocking of President Bush’s electronic communications with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for a critical period?

    Question: How did 9/11 serve the interests of the lunatic right in Israel and its neo-con associates in America?

    In their view Saddam Hussein represented the only foreseeable potential Arab challenge to Greater Israel’s continued military domination of the whole Arab world. He had to be removed. By falsely claiming that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attack, Zionism and its neo-con associates in America set the stage for President Bush to be conned into going to war.

    Zionism’s intention to get rid of Saddam Hussein was not, in fact, a secret. In 1996, under the chairmanship of Richard Perle, widely known in informed circles as the “Prince of Darkness”, American Zionism presented a policy document with the title A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm.

    It urged incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have no second thoughts about making a clean break with the Rabin policy of negotiating with the PLO and trading land for peace. Israel’s claim to all the land it occupied was “legitimate and noble”, the policy paper said. “Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights is a solid basis for the future.” After the clean break Israel would be free to shape its “strategic environment”. What would that involve? Among other things, “re-establishing the principle of pre-emption (pre-emptive strikes)… focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq… weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria, Hizbollah and Iran.”

    In fact the commitment of Zionism’s in-America fixers and their neo-con associates to getting rid of Saddam Hussein goes back further than 1996. They were angry when President Bush the First refused to complete the job when he assembled a coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait. After that Zionism’s in-America fixers and their neo-con associates needed two things:

    A president who was dumb enough to buy their ideas – they got that with George “Dubya” Bush; and

    A “Pearl Harbour” like event to trigger the action. They got that with 9/11.

    But there was much more to it. 9/11 was a win-win for Zionism in another way.

    Predictably it provoked a rising tide of Islamophobia throughout the Western world and across America especially. In the minds of uninformed and ignorant Americans (i.e. most Americans), that in turn gave added credibility to the Zionist state’s claim to be America’s only true and reliable ally in the whole of the Arab and wider Muslim world.

    As I say in the Dear America introduction to the American edition of Volume 1 of my book, when Americans asked “Why do they hate us?”, they were more or less all Arabs and Muslims everywhere. And I asked this question: What would Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush had caused the Why-do-they-hate-us question to be addressed seriously?

    The short answer I give in my Dear America Introduction – the long answer is in the three volumes of my book – begins with the statement that the overwhelming majority of all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do NOT hate America or Americans. What almost all Arabs and Muslims everywhere DO hate is American foreign policy – its double standards in general and, in particular, its unconditional support for an Israel which ignores UN resolutions, demonstrates its contempt for international law and human rights conventions and resorts to state terrorism… A related truth is that for decades very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other Muslims who would opt for American residence and citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the Free and licking its lips.

    KZ: Over the past five years and since the escalation of international controversy over Iran’s nuclear program, Israel has repeatedly threatened Iran with an imminent military strike and supported the imposition of financial sanctions against the country over its nuclear activities. Will Israel eventually attack Iran? What will be the consequences of such an attack for the Middle East?

    AH: I do not believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that I am wrong and that in the not too distant future it does possess some. Does anybody seriously think it would launch a nuclear first strike on Israel? Of course it would not. If it did, the whole of Iran would be devastated by a retaliatory response. No Iranian leadership is ever going to invite such a catastrophe. Unless Zionism’s leaders are completely out of their minds, they know this. So why, really, are they playing up the alleged Iranian nuclear threat?

    I think they are doing so for three reasons.
    One is to deflect attention from their crimes, in part to reduce the prospect of real pressure on them to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could just about accept.

    Another is what might be called a strategic consideration. Israel’s leaders know that if Iran did posses nuclear weapons, their freedom to go on imposing their will on the region would be greatly restricted.

    But most of all there is Zionism’s need for Israeli Jews to feel frightened.

    A good explanation of why was provided by Ira Cherna in a Truthout post in November 2009. It was headlined Israel’s Pathology. Cherna asked – How can it be that pathological feelings of fear, weakness and victimization are “comforting” to very many Israelis? His answer was the following:
    “For starters, they automatically put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame the weak victim for the violence? All the trouble, it seems, is started by the other side… And if all the trouble is started by the other side, then all the fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and victimization seem to prove that ‘We’re moral.’ Obviously, it’s our enemies who are immoral and thus to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no reason even to consider changing any of their policies or behaviors.”

    Will Israel eventually attack Iran?
    Where Zionism is concerned nothing is impossible, but I prefer to think that even Israel’s leaders, despite their rhetoric, are not that mad. As I’m sure you know, there have been reports that Obama sent messengers to Israel to tell its leaders that attacking Iran was not an option. That suggests to me there won’t be an attack on Iran on his watch. But what if Obama doesn’t get a second term? If the Republican and Tea Party lunatics come to power in the 2012 American elections, I imagine that all bets will be off. In a worst case scenario there’s a Mossad nuclear false flag operation in America which is blamed on Iran. Within minutes if not seconds of it happening, the cry goes up, “Bomb the bastards!” The only thing then to be decided would be whether the U.S. should give Israel the greenlight or do the job itself.

    What would be the consequences of an attack on Iran?

    Short answer, catastrophe for the region – sustained conflict and instability; huge damage to American and other Western interests throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world; and quite possibly the collapse of what remains of the global economy, this because Iran has the ability to disrupt oil exports from the Gulf and provoke a worldwide oil crisis.

    It’s also not impossible that an attack on Iran would encourage its leadership, any leadership, to acquire nuclear weapons.

    KZ: What’s your prediction for the future of Israel’s political entity? Will it continue to survive or will it terminate in a destiny like that of the apartheid regime of South Africa or the Soviet Union?

    AH: I personally think Zionism’s colonial enterprise is doomed. In my analysis there was a pre-condition for the survival of the Zionist, not Jewish state. When it closed the Palestine file in 1948/49, it had to keep the file closed, prevent a re-generation of Palestinian nationalism. It has failed to do that.

    That fact takes us to the real threat to Israel’s existence. It is not Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran or any combination of Arab and other Muslim force. The real threat is the demographic time-bomb of occupation.

    In occupation of the West Bank, Israel has three options:
    1. Formally annexing it and granting all of its citizens equal rights, this to enable Israel to go on claiming that it is a democracy. The problem with this option s that it would bring about an end of the Zionist state by political means because, in due course, the Arab citizens of Greater Israel would outnumber and outvote its Jewish citizens.

    2. Formally annexing the West Bank but denying Greater Israel’s Arab citizens (the majority in the making) equal rights. In this scenario Greater Israel would have to treat its Arab citizens even worse than the black majority in South Africa was treated by the apartheid regime. And that would not be acceptable to many Jews of the world and, perhaps, a significant number of Israeli Jews. It would also present the governments of the international community with no choice, at some point, but to declare Greater Israel a pariah state and impose sanctions on it.

    3. Resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing – provoking an all-out confrontation with the Palestinians to give the IDF and the armed settlers the pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever, in the name of self-defense, of course. If the Palestinians refused to flee, there would be, as I said earlier, a bloodbath. A Zionist holocaust.

    As things are today it’s my view that, at a point, Israel’s leaders will go for the third option. When they do there will such outrage in the world that governments including the one in Washington DC will have to say to Israel, “Enough is enough!” And the Zionist state will then be subjected to diplomatic isolation and crippling sanctions, with serious efforts to call and hold its political and military leaders to account for their crimes.
    How will Israel’s leaders respond?

    As Golda Meir said, in a doomsday situation they will be prepared to take the region and possibly the world down with them.
    If you asked me if I really believe that’s how the story of the struggle for Palestine could end, I would answer “Yes”, and this is why.
    Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism which created a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Zionism is a pathological mindset. And what the deluded Zionist mind actually thinks is this: “The world has always hated Jews and always will.” In other words, the pathological Jewish mindset assumes that Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning against Jews) is inevitable.

    In the shadow of the Nazi holocaust, that way of thinking led Zionism’s leaders into believing there was nothing they should not do to preserve Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews when the world turned against them again.

    And the end, mad, Zionist logic speaks for itself. “If the world won’t let us do whatever we believe to be necessary to preserve Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews, our enterprise is doomed, but we won’t go down alone.”

    Kourosh Ziabari

    Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian media correspondent, freelance journalist and interviewer. He is a contributing writer of Finland’s Award-winning Ovi Magazine and the the Foreign Policy Journal. He is a member of Tlaxcala Translators Network for Linguistic Diversity (Spain). He is also a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development (WSC-SD). Kourosh Ziabari’s articles have appeared in a number of Canadian, Belgian, Italian, French and German websites. He can be reached at kziabari@gmail.com

  • Israeli blackmail: You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will

    Israeli blackmail: You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will

    by PAUL WOODWARD

    There are those who would have us believe that:

    jeffrey goldberg[O]ne day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.

    Worried about an Israeli attack on Iran? That’s the idea.

    You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.

    This is how some Israelis are trying to twist Washington’s arm to get the US to attack Iran.

    A more honest way of making the argument would be to say this: If the US won’t attack Iran, then Israel will — even though it won’t accomplish its military objectives and it will open Pandora’s box. Desperate nations sometimes do desperate things. You have been warned.

    Another name for this: blackmail.

    It’s hard to counter an irrational argument when the irrationality is intentional. Such are the means by which someone like erstwhile Israeli army corporal and currentAtlantic commentator, Jeffrey Goldberg, attempts to persuade his readers — not through cogent reasoning based on clear evidence, but by an insidious form of argument that has the clarity of slime.

    Consider the way he tries to close his case for an attack on Iran — even while avoiding saying straight out that he supports such a course of action.

    The United States must not take the risk of letting Israel attack Iran because if President Obama orders US forces to attack instead, this would be the most patriotic thing to do. Obama would not be serving Israel’s interests; he would be defending Western civilization.

    Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program; and Obama knows — as his aides, and others in the State and Defense departments made clear to me — that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to the interests of the United States, which include his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, I agreed with those, including many Israelis, Arabs — and Iranians — who believe there is no chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still don’t believe there is a great chance he will take military action in the near future — for one thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is clearly seized by the issue. And understanding that perhaps the best way to obviate a military strike on Iran is to make the threat of a strike by the Americans seem real, the Obama administration seems to be purposefully raising the stakes. A few weeks ago, Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, told me, “What you see in Iran is the intersection of a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel. I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it is so important to us.”

    When I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahu’s effort to make Israel’s case to the Obama administration, he responded, characteristically, with a parable, one that suggested his country should know its place, and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president, to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.

    “Shortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the Waldorf-Astoria” in New York, Peres told me. “After the meeting, Kennedy accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in return?’ Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, ‘What you can do is be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a great president of the United States is a great event.’”

    Peres went on to explain what he saw as Israel’s true interest. “We don’t want to win over the president,” he said. “We want the president to win.”

    Israel only wants what’s good for America — and we’re supposed to believe that, even while few if any Israelis could be persuaded that America only wants what’s good for Israel.

    The truth is that everyone gets to define their own interests so let’s ignore the obsequious crap from Peres and consider Goldberg’s core claim: that Israel is gearing up to strike Iran.

    Even if Goldberg is participating in a neocon game of bluff, the only kind of bluff worth engaging in is one that has credibility. To make a credible argument that Israel has the intention of going it alone, Goldberg would have to present the outline of a credible plan of attack. He doesn’t even try.

    Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation.

    And he prefaces this “plan” by saying Israel only gets one try. That’s not even a back-of-an-envelope war plan. It’s more like a Twitter war plan.

    Five years ago Kenneth Pollack dismissed the idea that Israel could attack Iran on its own. I don’t see any reason to doubt that his analysis on the military logistics of an attack still remains sound. Indeed, there seem to be plenty of Israeli analysts who concede that Israel simply does not have the option of going it alone. Even Goldberg quotes an unnamed Israeli general who says: “This is too big for us.”

    In The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, Pollack wrote:

    [T]he United States … should not count on Israel to conduct a counterproliferation strike for us. It is almost certainly the case that Israel would be willing to absorb the diplomatic costs of a strike, would be prepared to deal with Iran’s retaliation in the form of either terrorist attacks or missile strikes on Israel, and probably is not overly concerned about Iranian behavior in Iraq. The problem for Israel is much simpler: Iran is too far away. Most of the known Iranian nuclear facilities are around 1,000 miles away from Israel. Its Jericho II ballistic missiles could reach these targets, but they lack the payload, accuracy, and numbers to be able to significantly damage (let alone destroy) more than one or two of the large Iranian nuclear facilities, which leaves the matter to the Israeli Air Force. Even assuming that Israeli aircraft were to fly directly to Iran, overflying Jordan and Iraq, the only aircraft in its inventory that could reach Iran’s known nuclear sites are its 25 F-151 strike fighters. (Israel would need to set up aerial refueling stations at three to five locations between Israel and the Iranian targets for its roughly 350 F-16s to be able to participate, which would be practically impossible.) Because the F-151s would have to carry a considerable amount of fuel, they could not carry a great deal of ordinance. Given the size of the various Iranian nuclear facilities, it would not be possible for Israel to destroy all of them in a single raid as it did Osiraq. Nor would it be politically, militarily, or logistically possible for Israel to sustain multiple such strikes over the many days, if not weeks, it would take for all its F-151s to accomplish the job. [My emphasis.]

    The neocon game of bluff will only box in the Obama administration if the Israeli “threats” are treated seriously. A more appropriate response would seem to be to focus on the limits of Israeli military action — unless that is one imagines that Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran, which to my mind is wildly implausible. (If Israel wants to permanently seal its global pariah status, the first offensive use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki is a sure way.)

    Goldberg reports, but apparently didn’t take seriously, the observations of some Israelis who given their positions of military command seem to merit close attention:

    Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, is said by numerous sources to doubt the usefulness of an attack, and other generals I spoke with worry that talk of an “existential threat” is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people. “We don’t want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the word Shoah [Holocaust],” one general said. “We don’t want our neighbors to think that we are helpless against an Iran with a nuclear bomb, because Iran might have the bomb one day. There is no guarantee that Israel will do this, or that America will do this.”

    The message Netanyahu, Goldberg and other panic-stricken Zionists are unintentionally sending out is that come the day Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Israelis may as well back their bags and abandon the Jewish state.

    That probably won’t happen because in such an event Israel will “discover” what many Israelis no doubt already think: that retired General John Abizaid was right when he said that the United States and its allies can “live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. “Let’s face it — we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with nuclear powers as well,” Abizaid told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    That was true in 2007 and it’s true now. It’s also true that spineless politicians remain the playthings of fear-mongers who are addicted to war.

    This article is cross-posted at Woodward’s site, War in Context.

    http://mondoweiss.net/2010/08/israeli-blackmail-you-must-do-what-we-can’t-because-if-you-don’t-we-will.html, AUGUST 11, 2010

  • Latest Neocon insanity: kick Turkey out of NATO

    Latest Neocon insanity: kick Turkey out of NATO

    Latest Neocon insanity: kick Turkey out of NATO – Harper

    harpIN RETALIATION FOR THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON THE GAZA AID FLOTILLA 

    The silly season just got positively bizarre.  In the aftermath of the Israeli armed assault on a Turkish-flagged aid ship, bound for the Gaza Strip, some of the more rabid American neocons have demanded, in no uncertain terms, that Turkey must be punished by being kicked out of NATO.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  Israel carried out an act of international piracy, and cold-blooded murder in international waters, and Turkey must be punished.  Has someone dumped a shot of LSD-25 into the water cooler at the American Enterprise Institute?

                It is pretty obvious that a talking points memo went out from the Israeli embassy or some other locale, because in a matter of days, many of the usual suspects—Daniel Pipes, Stephen Schwartz, Michael Rubin, and Victor Davis Hanson, not to mention the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)—all came out with the identical, preposterous notion that Turkey is the perp and Israel the victim. 

                On June 8th JINSA issued Report #995*, claiming, “Turkish government support for the IHH ship in the Gaza flotilla is now well understood and the anti-Semitic ravings of both official Turks and the Turkish media have made Turkey’s intention to split from Israel clear… The Hamas-Turkey relationship has grown as the Turkey-Palestinian Authority relationship, the relationship supported by the United States and the EU, has declined.  Rapproachment with Russia, Syria and Iran, and the Iran-Brazil-Turkey enriched uranium deal are more of the same.”

                The JINSA screed ends with a threat and a demand:  “Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran.  If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect.  The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organization.” 

                JINSA, of course, includes such neocon icons as John Bolton, Dr. Stephen D. Bryen, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Richard Perle, Stephen Solarz, Kenneth Timmerman and R. James Woolsey.

                The same day that JINSA issued their pronouncement, Daniel Pipes delivered his rant, proclaiming that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a more dangerous radical Islamist than Osama bin-Laden.   “If once only a small band of analysts recognized Erdogan’s Islamist outlook, this fact has now become obvious for the whole world to see.  Erdogan has gratuitously discarded his carefully crafted image of a pro-Western `Muslim democrat,’ making it far easier to treat him as the Tehran-Damascus ally that he is.”

                And what might be Pipes’ remedy?  “Turkey has returned to the center of the Middle East and the umma.  But it no longer deserves full NATO membership, and its opposition parties deserve support.” 

                Victor Davis Hanson took an extra few days to come out both barrels blazing against Turkey’s NATO membership.  He penned a June 10th National Review Online assault, “The New Wannabe Ottomans,” blaming Turkey for allowing the flotilla of aid ships, bound for Gaza, to leave from a Turkish port, thus forcing Israel to attack.  But the diatribe was nothing new.  He observed:  “Lately, Turkey has reached out to Iran and Syria.  Both habitually sponsor Mideast terrorist groups and have aided anti-American insurgents in Iraq.  Turkey and Brazil recently offered to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, sidestepping American and European efforts to step up sanctions to stop Teheran’s plans for a bomb.  Erdogan’s anti-Israel attacks often match those of his newfound friends, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah…  What is behind Turkey’s metamorphosis from a staunch U.S. ally, NATO member, and quasi-European state into a sponsor of Hamas, ally of theocratic Iran, and fellow traveler with terrorist-sponsoring Syria?” 

                Hanson’s answer:  “Turkey senses a growing distance between Tel Aviv and Washington, and thus an opportunity to step into the gulf to unite Muslims against Israel and win influence in the Arab world.”

                And guess what Hanson poses as the solution:  “Turkey’s new ambitions and ethnic and religious chauvinism are antithetical to its NATO membership.  The U.S. should not be treaty-bound to defend a de facto ally of Iran or Syria, which are both eager to obtain nuclear weapons… In response, the U.S. should make contingency plans to relocate from its huge Air Force base at Incirlik… If Erdogan is intent on a suicidal reinvention of Turkey into a pale imitation of Ottoman hegemony, we can at least take steps to ensure that it will be his mess—and none of our own.”

                If I didn’t know something about the neoconservatives, and their worship of the late Leo Strauss, I would be a bit more stunned by the sheer chutzpah of their deceptions and sophistic defenses of Israel’s baffling and indefensible actions.  But I am not shocked, having lived through the neocon’s golden age during Bush and Cheney.  We are still paying the price for their “Clean Break” with reality.  Let us just hope that between Bob Gates, Jim Jones, and Hillary Clinton, they have enough of a sense of humor, and enough of an appreciation of the Israeli disinformation machinery, that they won’t be lured into buying these tall tales and doing something foolish.

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/06/latest-neocon-insanity-kick-turkey-out-of-nato-harper.html

    * It Is About the United States
    • JINSA Reports

    JINSA Report #: 

    995

    June 8, 2010

    Turkey and Honduras, in different ways, highlight the lack of effective leadership the United States currently is able to exercise in the world.

    Turkey: Turkish government support for the IHH ship in the Gaza flotilla is now well understood and the anti-Semitic ravings of both official Turks and the Turkish media have made Turkey’s intention to split from Israel clear.

    But it is a mistake to think this is only about Israel. Support for the flotilla was only the latest in a series of Turkish decisions designed to distance itself from the United States and move toward closer political relations with countries adversarial to us. Immediately after the bloody 2007 Hamas coup against Fatah in Gaza, the United States and the European Union reiterated that Hamas was a terrorist organization to be shunned. Instead, Turkey’s prime minister invited Hamas leadership to Ankara. The Hamas-Turkey relationship has grown as the Turkey-Palestinian Authority relationship, the relationship supported by the United States and the EU, has declined. Rapprochement with Russia, Syria and Iran, and the Iran-Brazil-Turkey enriched uranium deal are more of the same.

    After his meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters, “Citizens of member states were attacked by a country that is not a member of NATO. I think you can make some conclusions out of this statement.” The implication was that Turkey would ask NATO for some satisfaction-or some slap at Israel.

    Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Minister.

    Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran. If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey’s arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organization.

    Honduras: The United States tried to have it both ways. The Obama Administration quickly jumped in with Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and Nicaragua to denounce what it called a “coup” in Honduras. The United States voted with its new best friends to oust Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS), and cut off various forms of diplomatic and economic aid to the small Central American country. After the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded that the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military had acted in accordance with the Honduran Constitution, the Obama Administration brokered a deal that permitted the previously scheduled election with previously nominated candidates to go forward. When the new president was sworn in, the United States recognized the new government and withdrew its sanctions.

    All’s well that ends well, right? Not exactly.

    At the OAS meeting in Peru this week, the United States tried to have Honduras reinstated. Guess who said no; Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and Nicaragua refused to even to put the issue on the table. Hugo, Lula, Fidel and Danny were perfectly happy to let the Obama Administration join them in ganging up on a (former) American ally. But they still think they’re leading.

    Maybe they are.