I must start by saying that Jihadism is my necessary headline shorthand for violent Islamic fundamentalism in all of its manifestations. In this article I’m going to ask and offer answers to two main questions. The first is – Where does this madness come from? I mean what is it, really, that gives birth and life to violent Islamic fundamentalism?
This is the most controversial article the gentile me has ever written or is ever likely to write, but I believe that what I am going to say needs to be said and should be widely debated if the rising, global tide of “anti-Israelism” (I prefer the term anti-Zionism) is not to be transformed into anti-Semitism on a scale that could lead, in a foreseeable future, to Holocaust II, my shorthand for another great turning against the Jews.
Dear Mr. President,
This open letter was inspired by a friend of mine who suggested that you should be urged to resign rather than remain a prisoner of the majority in Congress who take their orders from the Zionist lobby and its so-called Christian evangelical allies and who by doing so are betraying America’s own best interests and could be called traitors not mere stooges. My friend made this suggestion after he had reflected upon what I had said to him – that because you allow Israel to act in defiance of international law with impunity, you are complicit by default in Israel’s war crimes.
Of course I know that you won’t resign but I have a suggestion about what you could do after the upcoming mid-term elections if you are to have a legacy worth having.
THE ESSENCE OF WHAT I AM GOING TO SUGGEST IS THAT YOU COULD AND SHOULD SET IN MOTION THE PROCESS NEEDED TO GIVE AMERICA SOME REAL DEMOCRACY. In this letter I am going to offer you my thoughts on the why and how.
For democracy to exist the citizens of nations, the voters, must be informed enough about critical issues to be able to call and hold their leaders and governments to account, and not only at election time but between elections, all the time. This is most certainly not the case in America. What passes for democracy in your country is for sale to the highest lobby bidders (not only the Zionist lobby). You have the framework for democracy but not the substance.
Before I go further I want you to know that this gentile Englishman (me) is not in any way, shape or form anti-American. I have been visiting your country on and off for nearly half a century and, as I wrote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews and have said on public platforms coast-to-coast across it, I have a love-hate relationship with America. What do I mean?
On one level and generally speaking, I think Americans are the most uninformed, misinformed and therefore gullible people on the face of Planet Earth. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that deep down Americans are, I truly believe, the most idealistic people in the world. It follows that if they were aware of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and if as consequence of that awareness they understood who must do what and why for justice and peace, they would support a president using the leverage he has to try to oblige Israel’s leaders to end their defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.
A question arising is this. What is the essence of the truth of history all Americans need to know about what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict if they are to be empowered to play their necessary part in making democracy work?
I’m now going to summarise very, very briefly the essence of seven truths all Americans need to know. (The detailed and documented evidence that supports them is in my book, three volumes in its American edition published by Clarity Press).
1. Very few Israeli or other Jews have any biological/ancestral connection to the ancient Hebrews. The notion that there are two peoples with an equal claim to the land of Palestine is Zionist propaganda nonsense.
2. Israel is a Zionist not a Jewish state (how could it be a Jewish state when a quarter of its citizens are Arabs and mainly Muslims?) And Zionism and modern Judaism are not one and the same as Zionism asserts they are in order to label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Zionism and Judaism are, in fact, total opposites. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles. Zionism’s policies and actions demonstrate complete contempt for these moral values and ethical principles. (Do you know, Mr. President, that in a recent article on the IDF’s delivery of death and destruction to the Gaza Strip American Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, said he was “mourning for a Judaism being murdered by Israel”?)
3. Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing; and without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust Zionism almost certainly would not have been able to mobilise and command enough Jewish support – financial, political and other – to establish itself in Palestine in state form. (Prior to the Nazi holocaust a majority of the Jews of the world were opposed to Zionism’s enterprise. They believed it to be morally wrong. They believed it would lead to unending conflict. And they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way in Palestine it would one day provoke anti-Semitism. Which is what it is doing today).
4. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Despite some stupid rhetoric to the contrary, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. (When Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948 and the Armistice Agreements that followed, the Arab regimes shared behind closed doors the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the Palestine file would remain closed. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. Their “crime” was and is their refusal to do so).
5. By the end of 1979, nearly 35 years ago, the pragmatic Arafat, on the advice of President Nasser more than a decade earlier, had prepared the ground on his side for peace on terms any rational government in Israel would have accepted with relief. He did it by persuading the Palestine National Council, more or less a Palestinian parliament-in-exile and then the highest decision making body on the Palestinian side, to endorse by 296 votes to 4 his policy of politics and compromise with Israel – compromise which until then had been unthinkable to all Palestinians because it required them to make peace with Israel in return for only 22 per cent of the land they rightfully claimed as their own. (Arafat also informed Israel’s leaders through secret channels that he and his leadership colleagues understood and reluctantly accepted that in order for a Palestinian mini state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be acceptable to most Israeli Jews, the Palestinian right of return would have to be restricted to the territory of the Palestinian state. That meant, as Arafat told me, only about 100,000 Palestinians would be able to return. But he was not renouncing the principle of the right of return for others. His hope was that one or two generations of a two-state peace would lead by mutual consent to One State with equal rights for all and therefore the space and trust needed to allow many more Palestinians to return. His priority in 1979 was to get “something concrete” for the Palestinians instead of nothing).
6. Since 27 March 2002 there has been on the table on Arab Peace Initiative (API) which was presented at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League by then Crown Prince and today King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. In return for an end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab land grabbed in the 1967 war (actually a war of Israeli aggression not self-defence) and Israel’s acceptance of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the API offers an end to the conflict AND WITH THE SIGNING OF A COMPREHENSIVE PEACE AGREEMENT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NORMAL RELATIONS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE ENTIRE ARAB WORLD. (If Israel’s leaders had been willing to explore what was on offer in the API, they would have discovered two things. One was that a comprehensive peace agreement could contain a clause limiting the Palestinian right of return to territory of the Palestinian state with compensation for the rest. The other was Arab flexibility on Jerusalem. The API has East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, but in negotiations for a full and final comprehensive peace the Arabs would accept that the whole of Jerusalem should be an undivided, open city and the capital of two states).
7. For some years Hamas’s top leaders have been on the public record with the statement that while they will never recognise Israel’s “right” to exist, they are prepared to accept the actual existence of an Israel inside its borders as they were on 4 June 1967, and live in peace with it, if that is the wish of a majority of Palestinians as expressed in a referendum.
Two related conclusions are demanded by the truth of history.
One is that it’s not Israel that has lacked and lacks a Palestinian partner for peace. It is the Palestinians who have lacked and lack an Israeli partner for peace. (There’s a case for saying that Israeli Prime Minister Rabin might have been one but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly what he was doing – killing the peace process Arafat’s pragmatism in motion).
The other conclusion is that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms that would provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice.
As I think you know, Mr. President, but dare not say, the game plan of Israel’s leaders is to make life hell for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians in the hope that they will either abandon their struggle and surrender to Zionism’s will by accepting crumbs from its table – a few Bantustans here and there which they could call a state if they wished, or, preferably, pack up and leave their homeland to make a new life elsewhere.
A question arising is what will Israel’s leaders do when they come to the conclusion that they cannot break the spirit of Palestinian resistance with bombs and bullets and humiliations of all kinds? My fear is that they will create the pretext for a final ethnic cleansing of Palestine. (They could do it by getting half a dozen of their agents to dress as Palestinians and kill 30 or 40 or more Israeli Jews. That done the IDF would be ordered to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or wherever. Those who didn’t flee would be slaughtered. And while the IDF was doing the slaughtering Israel’s leaders would say to the world, “Surely you understand why we had to do this.”)
In the American system, and given that for various reasons the mainstream media prefers Zionist propaganda to the truth of history, there is only one person who can reach the people with the truth – the president. The how is very simple. He takes to what is called on your side of the pond the “bully pulpit”, which means that he goes over the heads of Congress with a prime time tv and radio address to his fellow Americans.
In 1957 President Eisenhower, a leader with principles and balls, did just that to prevent the Zionist lobby and its traitor agents in Congress blocking him from demanding an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from occupied Egyptian territory. (You’ll recall, Mr. President, that in 1956, in secret collusion with Britain and France, Israel invaded Egypt to trigger war with the intended purpose of overthrowing President Nasser and grabbing back control of the Suez Canal which he had nationalised). In his address from the bully pulpit Eisenhower explained why he was insisting that Israel should with without conditions.
QUOTE
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 we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope for establishing a real world order.
UNQUOTE
The sad truth today, Mr. President, is that the UN Security Council is impotent because of your willingness as the prisoner of a political system that has been corrupted by lobby funding to follow Zionism’s orders and veto any resolution designed to call and hold Israel to account for its crimes and bring an end to its occupation of the West Bank.
Now to the main point of this letter.
If you did take to the bully pulpit after the upcoming mid-term elections in order to set in motion the process needed to give America some real democracy, you would have to do much more than tell the truth about the making and sustaining of the Israel-Palestine conflict and who must do what and why for justice and peace.
You would need above all to explain why legislation is urgently needed TO TAKE LOBBY FUNDING OUT OF POLITICS – I mean out of election campaigning and electioneering in all its forms. The case to be made in favour of that can be stated very simply. There is no other way to clean up and out the corruption of American politics. As long as those seeking election or re-election to Congress can be bought by powerful vested interests (not only the Zionist lobby) America will remain a democracy in name only not substance. And on policy for Israel-Palestine the President whoever he (or she) is will remain a prisoner in the White House.
The case for believing that a good majority of your fellow Americans would welcome and support an initiative by you to give substance to democracy can also be stated very simply. According to reputable polls over recent years the vast majority of Americans have little or no respect for Congress and many have at least a degree of contempt for it. They know it is corrupted by lobby money. (In my opinion it would be surprising if this contempt for Congress was not strengthened in the minds and hearts of some Americans when, in mid-July, the Senate passed by a vote of 100 to 0 a resolution fully supporting Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip and not mentioning Palestinian deaths).
In conclusion I’ll touch upon, again very briefly, the reasons why I think you should take to the bully pulpit after the mid-term elections to launch and lead a campaign for real democracy in your own country.
The first and prime duty of any president is to serve and protect America’s own best interests. Support for Israel right or wrong (an Israel that can be described today as a racist, going-fascist, out-of-control monster) is not in America’s own best interests. It is a major factor in the radicalization of the entire Arab and wider Muslim world which contains roughly a quarter of the human population of Planet Earth. A truth is that the vast majority of all Arabs and other Muslims would prefer to be America’s friends but American policy is turning them into enemies. With their war on Iraq “Dubya” Bush and Tony Blair became the best recruiting sergeants for violent Islamic fundamentalism in all its forms. By continuing, if only by default not design, to allow Israel to act with impunity in defiance of international law you, Mr. President, are helping to create an environment which will assist the growth of violent Islamic fundamentalism. (Yes, I know that’s what the neo-cons and probably some within the Military Industrial Complex want).
Like many Arabs and other Muslims I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear some of your statements. When, for example, you announced new sanctions on Russia, you said, “We stand up for rights and freedoms around the world.” Should you not have added “with the exception of the rights and freedoms of the Palestinians”?
And please, Mr. President, consider the following very, very seriously.
If Israel continues on its present course there is a real possibly that at some point in the foreseeable future the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism will be transformed into anti-Semitism, leading to Holocaust II, my shorthand for another great turning against Jews everywhere.
If that happens it will be not only because the policies and actions of Israel’s leaders awakened the sleeping giant of anti-Semitism. (In my view this giant would most likely have died in its sleep after and because of the Nazi holocaust if Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers to have its way in Palestine). If there is another great turning against Jews everywhere it will also be because successive American presidents did not use the leverage only they have to require Israel to live in accordance with international law and the norms of civilized nation state behaviour in general, and to respect the rights and freedoms of the Palestinians in particular.
Do you want that on your conscience, Mr. President?
I am, of course, aware that after the upcoming mid-term elections your main concern in what is left of your presidency will be your legacy. If on policy for Israel-Palestine you remain a prisoner of a political system corrupted by election campaign funding, I don’t think it, your legacy, will be one that you could be proud about.
But it would be an entirely different story if as I have suggested you broke out of prison by launching and leading a campaign to give your country some real democracy. If you set the necessary process in motion. and if then enough of your fellow citizens played their necessary part in keeping it going to a successful conclusion, you would go down in history as one of the greatest American presidents and arguably the greatest of them all. And you would be respected and admired by the citizens of the world instead of being seen by an increasing number of them as you are at present – a Zionist stooge (a reluctant one I believe) and a joke.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Alan Hart
P.S. There’s a question I’d like to ask you about Netanyahu in the light of his absurd statements of justification for Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip. (I think his single most obnoxious statement was his endorsement of the assertion made by Elie Wiesel – that “Hamas engages in child sacrifice.”) My question has a context.
Way back in 1980 I had conversations with the best and the brightest of Israel’s former Directors of Military Intelligence. (I name him in my book). I said to him over coffee one morning that I had come to the conclusion that it was all a myth. What I meant and went on to say was that Israel’s existence had never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Through a sad smile he replied, “The trouble with us Israelis is that we have become the victims of our own propaganda.”
Netanyahu is obviously a victim of his own propaganda. But is there more to it than that? Is he deluded to the point of clinical madness? In other words, is he insane?
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was right when, after saying that “All the evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause” (of the attack on the UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp where more than 3,000 Palestinians were taking shelter from Israeli bombs and shells), he added the following. … continue reading
The question of my headline was asked by an exasperated and quietly angry Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN during his diplomatic effort in the Middle East. Because Israel is doing virtually all of the killing I think it is more than reasonable to assume that the SG’s rhetorical question was addressed primarily to Israel’s leaders. The answer to it can be very simply stated.
Because it is committed to retaining the maximum amount of Palestinian land with the minimum number of Palestinians on it and therefore has no interest in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept, Zionism knows no other way of behaving. Killing Palestinians comes as naturally to it as pissing when the bladder is full.
Another part of the whole terrible truth as noted by Gideon Levy is that most of the brainwashed Jewish public in Israel is not remotely concerned by the death and destruction its war machine is inflicting on the Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip prison camp. One of Gideon’s most recent articles for Ha’aretz included the following revealing and chilling paragraph.
QUOTE
The website “Walla!” published talkback comments on an article about the four children killed on the Gaza beach. Shani Moyal: “I couldn’t care less that Arab children were killed, too bad it wasn’t more. Well done to the IDF.” Stav Sabah: “Really, these are great pictures. They make me so happy, I want to look at them again and again.” Sharon Avishi: “Only four? Too bad. We hoped for more.” Daniela Turgeman: “Great. We need to kill all the children.” Chaya Hatnovich: “There isn’t a more beautiful picture than those of dead Arab children.” Orna Peretz: “Why only four?” Rachel Cohen: “I’m not for children dying in Gaza. I’m for everyone burning.” Tami Mashan: “As many children as possible should die.”
UNQUOTE
If that’s not proof of how much many Israeli Jews have been dehumanized by occupation and the propaganda of their leaders I don’t know what is.
According to a report in the Times of Israel, Yasser Abbas, the son of President Abbas, has said that “Israel is behaving like the Nazis and the IDF is a Nazi army.”
One of my very dear Jewish friends has been of that opinion for some time. Who? The anti-Zionist Dr. Hajo Meyer, the author of The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed (by Zionism). He writes and speaks from the experience of having survived the Nazi holocaust in Auschwitz.
If the situation today was not so tragic the efforts of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry and his European counterparts to bring about a ceasefire would be hysterically funny. They know what they should do – draft a binding UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to the fighting and stating that rejection of the resolution would be punished with sanctions.
But they also know that in line with America’s policy of preventing the Zionist state from being called and held to account for its crimes, President Obama would order such a resolution to be vetoed.
In my opinion there is one thing Kerry could do to shake up and possibly change the dynamics of what is happening. He could resign and say in his resignation statement that it was impossible to pursue a foreign policy that served the best interests of all concerned, American interests especially, because of the stranglehold the Zionist lobby and its mad, so-called Christian fundamentalist allies have on Congress.
I think it is not impossible that such a thought has crossed Kerry’s mind but, of course, he won’t resign.
From the incredibly self-righteous statements made by Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor after the Security Council’s pathetic call for an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire we know what Israel really wants. Prosor said Israel was “tired of the vilification of the only democracy in the Middle East” and that it was really very simple. “If there’s quiet in Israel there will be quiet in Gaza,” he added. In other words, Israel wants a “quiet” occupation. No resistance from the occupied and oppressed Palestinians. They must surrender, peacefully, to Zionism’s will. And if they don’t they will be killed.
Footnote
When those who defend Israel’s actions with the statement that “We withdrew from Gaza years ago and look what happened”, the best response is, I think, something like the following. “Cut the bullshit. The siege of the Gaza Strip is occupation by remote control.”
