A nuclear armed Iran? No.
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that some in Iran’s current leadership do want their country to possess nuclear weapons and that they do succeed in developing them. What then?
Is it conceivable that Iran would launch a first strike on Israel?
The answer has to be no. Absolutely not! An Iranian first strike would bring retaliation that would not end until Iran had been annihilated, … continue reading
As I noted in my last post, Israel’s education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, has announced that Nakba is to be removed from classrooms, effectively requiring a new generation of Israeli Arabs to wipe from their minds the truth of history. Hamas then provoked the outrage and condemnation of many Jews everywhere by declaring that it was asking for holocaust education to be suppressed in UNWRA schools in the Gaza Strip.
So how about a deal?
Hamas will welcome teaching about the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust and its consequences IF Israel will allow all of its children, Jews as well as Arabs, to be honestly educated about the Nakba – the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians -and its consequences.
South African Ronnie Kasrils, a leading international campaigner for human rights and humanitarian law, has issued an important statement of his request for charges to be filed against Israelis suspected of international crimes [PDF] for their participation in the planning and execution of Operation Cast Lead (Zionism’s war on the Gaza Strip).
For those who might not know who Kasrils is, here’s a brief background: … continue reading
In this post I am addressing a comment raised on 13 July this year by Paul Morris in his response to Celebrating the denial of ethnic cleansing, my article posted on 13 May last year. Paul wrote as follows … continue reading
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has given Arab leaders an opportunity to call his bluff. They could do it by asking him, publicly and speaking with one voice, two questions.
The first question is: Which Israel is to be recognised – Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, the Greater Israel of today or something in between? “In other words”, the question would add, “what are the borders of the Israel to be recognised?”
The second question is: … continue reading
The real test of President Obama’s Cairo speech is not in the Arab or wider Muslim world.
Or Israel. It’s in America. This President, perhaps the most informed, the most eloquent and the most enlightened occupant of the White House in his country’s history (God Bless Americans for electing him), knows exactly what he’s got to do and how to do it. Above all, he knows that if he is to have a chance of … continue reading
President Obama has apparently taken President Carter’s advice. It was that any American President has only two windows of opportunity to break the iron grip the Zionist lobby in all of its manifestations has on the Congress of the United States of America on matters to do with the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. The two windows are the first nine months of a president’s first term and the second half of his second term if he has one. This is so because fund-raising for the mid-term elections, which enables Zionism to buy law makers or take out those who won’t toe Zionism’s line (e.g. Congressman Paul Findley), begins in about month ten.
… continue reading
Unless they are the victims of their own propaganda and deluded close to the point of clinical madness, which is possible, Israel’s leaders must know that even a nuclear-armed Iran could not and would not pose an existential threat to the Jews now living in Israel/Palestine. So why, really, are they, Prime Minister Netanyahu especially, trying so hard to make the world believe otherwise?
This post is not about conflict in the Middle East and the politics of stopping or not the countdown to catastrophe for all. It’s about a lady who has won my heart and my mind.
It’s long been my view that modern life is a de-humanizing process, that our leaders are taking us back to the jungle, and that if our children are to have even the prospect of a future worth having, we citizens of nations have got to claim back our humanity. In that light I see and hear Scottish singer Susan Boyle as a great inspiration.
If the scandal submerging the British parliament at Westminster was only about the abuse of expenses by MPs of all parties, the crisis would be manageable by punishment of the offenders and new rules; but the sickness at the heart of what passes for democracy in once but no longer Great Britain needs a much more profound cure.
In the light of the BBC’s refusal to give air-time to the Disaster Emergency Committee’s Gaza appeal, and even if it changes its mind before this article isposted, it really is time for an open and honest debate about what, really, determines the corporation’s editorial decision-making on matters to do with Israel … continue reading
Knowing the documented truth about the creation of Israel by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing, and watching (mainly thanks to Al Jazeera and PressTV live feeds) the war on Gaza, Israel’s latest display of state terrorism, I have come to a conclusion. It’s time to give Israel’s hardcore Zionists their real name … continue reading
Why does Israel still find it impossible to understand that the Palestinians will not give up their struggle for freedom and independence? That was the question posed in an analysis by Abu Manneh, Znet 2 January 2009. In my analysis it’s because Israel’s present leaders in government do understand that the Palestinians are not going to abandon their struggle for some justice that they – defense minister Barak and foreign minister Livni principally – decided on “total war” with Hamas in the Gaza Strip … continue reading
That was the headline over a splendid piece of reporting for IPS (Inter Press Service) published on 30 July by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe. They concluded that “new political space is being created for the public airing of more moderate views on Middle East policy.” If they are right, and I think they are, there is reason, at last, to be less than totally pessimistic about the prospects of finding a cure for the cancer at the heart of international affairs, the Palestine problem, before it consumes us all.
In the quotation above “more moderate views” is a euphemism for views other than those of the Zionist (not Jewish!) lobby, of which AIPAC is the most prominent public face. It was described by Luban and Lobe as “the powerful lobbying group whose hawkish right-wing leadership has often defied both the views of the broader U.S. .Jewish community and the policies of Israeli governments.” (In my two-volume book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, I quote Shimon Peres telling me way back in 1980, when he was the leader of the opposition Labour Party, that the lobby in America “is notan Israel lobby. It’s a Likud lobby and that’s my problem.”)
The excellent IPS article by Luban and Lobe is primarily a review of the controversy sparked by TIMEcolumnist Joe Klein’s blogged statement that by pushing for war on Iraq and now for a “foolish assault on Iran”, Jewish neo-conservatives had caused the question of “divided loyalties” to be asked – because what Jewish neo-conservatives pushed and are pushing for is not in America’s own best interests … continue reading
With his political documentary FAREWELL ISRAEL, Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam, American director Joel Gilbert has launched what could be described as Zionism’s propaganda weapon of last resort.
The film is described by its promoters as “An historic journey, from the birth of Islam, through its 1,200 year reign over the civilised world, to the last 300 years of Islamic decline, overtaken and dominated by the West – then humiliated by a Jewish state… In this groundbreaking film, the total rejection of Israel by Muslim states since its inception in 1948 comes to light as a religious duty for Believers.”.
According to the same promotional script: “The Iranian agenda for acquiring strategic weapons to eliminate Israel comes clearly into focus. Today, at the direction of Iran, Islamists are preparing for a fateful war for Islam – and Israel is the number one target … continue reading
How can criticism of Israel be stopped? By labelling it as anti-Semitism, or so supporters of Israel right or wrong believe. This has always been Zionism’s game but now the U.S. State Department, no doubt under immense pressure from the Zionist lobby and its Christian fundamentalist allies, is playing it, too. In my view the State Department’s 94-page study, Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism,is a disengenuous and dangerous document which might well make all Jews everywhere more not less vulnerable.
In his report of the study, Ron Kampeas of the JTA (“The Global News Service of the Jewish People”) says: “U.S. diplomats and other officials will be expected to take their cues from this forceful language in how they deal with political groups and individuals overseas.”
The “forceful” language of the State Department study includes the following two paragraphs … continue reading
In an perceptive piece for The American Conservativeunder the headline OBAMA’S ISRAEL TEST, Scott McConnell asked, “Is the lobby losing its grip?” It seems so, but I think it’s important to understand the choice that will exist for the Jews of the world, and Jewish Americans especially, if American politicians (many if not all) and the mainstream media do stop being frightened of offending the lobby.
But first things first. The lobby in question is not what McConnell and others including Mearsheimer and Walt state it to be. It’s not“the Israel lobby”. It could only be called that if it represented the views of allIsraeli Jews. It does not do so any more than AIPAC represents the views of all Jewish Americans. (According to recent polls, AIPAC probably speaks for not more than one-third of all Jewish Americans and possibly considerably less).
A more accurate (but not completely accurate) description of the particular phenomenon is “Likud lobby”, terminology which conveys the correct impression that the lobby is rightwing and very hardline, even extreme, and … continue reading
Some Israeli and other Jewish opponents of Zionism’s colonial enterprise have described Israel as a “fascist” state. I think the more appropriate terminology is lunatic asylum. But I don’t blame the inmates (the Jewish citizens of the state) for what’s happening. They are as much the products of Zionist brainwashing as are the supporters of Israel right or wrong throughout the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world. I blame the wardens and management of the asylum (Israel’s military and political leaders)
Israel’s leaders still believe that by means of brute force and reducing them to abject poverty, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle for their rights. The assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table in the shape of two or three bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new life in other countries … continue reading
With Israel seriously considering how best to destroy Hamas (and Hizbollah and possibly Iran) and bolster the stooge leadership of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian friends have been asking me what I think the Palestinians could and should now do to improve their prospects for obtaining an acceptable amount of justice.
I thought my answer would not go down well with some of them but, in fact, it went down very well with all of them (including, for example, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, the former Bishop of Jerusalem).
My view is that the Palestinians would be well advised to … continue reading
No, dear reader, I’m not about to state or imply that the President of the United States of America dropped his trousers in public or anything like that. What he exposed during the course of an interview with Israeli Channel 2 was far more revealing and shocking than that.
To give some necessary context to what President Bush said to his Israeli Channel 2 interviewer (an apparently very nervous lady), I want to quote the words of a very dear Jewish friend of the Gentile me. He’s a survivor of the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust and one of the most passionate and courageous critics of the Zionist state of Israel and its crimes.
His name is Dr. Hajo Meyer. He was born in Germany, served in the Jewish underground and, when he was captured by the S.S., was transported to Aushchwitz. After that death camp was liberated, he pursued a very successful business career, becoming the managing director of … continue reading
Who said the following: When you’re the leader “you need, um, to be able to separate yourself (pause) somewhat from the magnitude of the consequences of the decisions you are taking?”?
Was it Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Menachem Begin, Pol Pot or possibly George “Dubya” Bush?
Answer, none of the above.
Just occasionally terrestrial television comes up with a documentary that provides real and (to my way of thinking) terrifying insight into the mindest of leaders. One such documentary, actually a series of three, The Blair Years, has just ended on BBC Television.
The third and last programme, which like all three was constructed on an in-depth conversation between the former prime minister and Sunday Timescolumnist David (am I really a Zionist?) Aaronovitch, was titled Blair In Power.
Throughout the programme, as in power, Blair insisted that he did what he did because he truly and totally believed it was “the right thing to do.” That, said Sir Ming Campbell, the former Liberal Democratic Party leader, was “a very frustrating phrase”. Why? “Because if I say to you (David Aaronovitch) that it’s ‘the right thing to do,’ there’s no forensic skill you can exercise that can disturb that. It’s a phrase of last resort, impervious to argument.”
In discourse analysis it’s known as the false dilemma. You can’t argue with somebody, particularly a leader, who insists that he was doing what was right because, implicity, you invite yourself to be seen as arguing for … continue reading
I subscribe to the daily news service provided by the JTA, “The Global Network Service of the Jewish People”. One of its stories today was headlined Book puts Foxman in “lobby” fight.
Abraham Foxman (in America) is the national director and chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the componement parts of the awesomely powerful Zionist lobby. He has just had published a new book, The Deadliest of Lies, The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. (According to reviewer Jeff Barak, the book “successfully demolishes the claims of two American academics <Mearshimer and Walt> that US policy in the Middle East is biased towards Israel, to the detriment of American interests, because of the power of the Israel lobby.”)
The JTA’s report contains this paragraph: … continue reading
In a press release commenting on Israel’s latest declaration of intent to punish collectively the inhabitants of Gaza, Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace bloc, said: “With our own hands we are uniting a million and a half people against us, in bitterness and hatred? The state of Israel is today roughly trampling International Law (so what’s new, I say) in indiscriminate collective punishments of a whole civilian population. We, too, will eventually pay the price.”
The question arising is something like this: Are the Zionist state’s politcal and military leaders merely the victims of their own propaganda (as a former Director of Israeli Military Intelligence once told me they were) and deluded, or do they want and need enemies? … continue reading
Given that it played the leading role in assisting Israel to acquire an atom bomb, I suppose it’s not surprising that France should now be singing from the same hymn sheet as America’s neo-cons and their Zionist allies on the matter of war with Iran.
In his radio and tv statement yesterday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was explicit. “We must prepare for the worst. The worst is war.”
This was completely in tune with the statement made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his first major foreign policy speech last month. He said that a diplomatic push by the world’s major powers was the only alternative to “an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.”
It’s reasonable to assume that French policy makers are not nearly as ignorant and as stupid as their counterparts in and around the Bush administration in Washington and that they, French leaders, don’t actually want war with Iran. So why, really, are they talking up the possibility of war?
My guess is that they are doing their bit to frighten other governments into going along with tough sanctions against Iran in the hope that the real prospect of tough sanctions will cause the leadership in Iran to back down and agree to suspend uranium enrichment work.
The question arising is something like this. What happens when Iran’s leaders, under threat of tough sanctions or not, don’t back down? … continue reading
BBC Director General Mark Thompson spoke for me (and, I imagine, most people in the world) when he said that news of Alan’s release had given him a “fantastic sense of relief and delight.”
My own sense of relief and delight was all the more fantastic because within days of Alan being taken I went public with my fear that he might already be dead, murdered.
We now know, from Alan’s own account, that he himself thought he was going to be killed when, at about 3.30 on the morning after he was abducted, he was hooded and taken outside.
In my expression of fear as posted to this blog, I said I believed it was wrong to jump to conclusions about who, really, had taken Alan (and might have killed him) and why. I went on to speculate that if one took motive in account, there was a case, repeat acase, for saying that Israel was one of the parties with a motive. That suggestion provoked a barrage of organised Zionist hate mail. Some of which I published.
Question: Does what we know today enable us to be any more certain about who, really, was responsible for Alan’s abduction? I say NO! … continue reading
I’ve been asked if there is a one-page summary of my two-volume book. There is, in the form of an author statement. Here it is.
The “they” of the headline above are governments and awesomely powerful vested interests – military, economic, political and mainstream media. They have no interest in the truth about how the Palestine problem was created and why a peaceful resolution of it has remained, and seems set to remain, beyond the reach of diplomacy. And they would prefer you to remain ignorant of it.
The “you” of the headline above are the citizens of nations, peoples of all faiths and none, who are concerned by events in the Middle East and their global fall-out – 9/11 in America, terrorist bombs in Madrid and London and so on.
In my view the prerequisite for peace in the Middle East is … continue reading
At a public meeting in London on Wednesday 11 April, I was asked for my thoughts (as a former ITN and BBC Panorama correspondent) about Alan Johnston’s “disappearance” in Gaza. I said that I feared he could be dead, and that if he was, he might well have been shot in the head within minutes of being taken more than a month ago.
If Alan is dead, the truth about who killed him might be in accordance with the claim of the Tawhid al Jihad Brigades group that it was responsible; but it also might not be (repeat might notbe).
The group which claimed responsibility in a fax to news agencies on 17 April is an Al Qaeda franchise (driven by events in Iraq), and was unknown in the Palestinian territories; and what can be said for certain is that the Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan’s permanent removal from the scene. And they had much to lose on two counts. … continue reading
