More than 24 years after the event, and to prevent a battle with the newspaper in the courts, Israeli military censors cleared for publication by Yediot Ahronot a truth – that it was Israeli commandoes who, on 16 April 1988, went all the way to Tunis to murder Abu Jihad, the co-founder with Arafat of Fatah and, at the time of his death, Arafat’s number two and most likely successor in the event of his assassination.
The third and final debate between President Obama and challenger Romney was so lacking in real and relevant substance about foreign affairs that I had to struggle, several times, to resist the temptation to turn it off and go back to bed.
In an article for Tom Dispatch, Peter Van Buren (a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for many years) posed what he described as Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won’t Be Raised in Presidential Debates. Question three was under the headline – What do we want from the Middle East?
Less than ten minutes into the first presidential debate I put my gut feelings into words on my notepad. “Romney is going to win this debate.” It seemed obvious to me that Romney was (as the BBC’s Mark Mardell subsequently commented) far better than Obama in terms of “look and feel” and also more sure-footed and confident than the president. When it was over there were two questions in my mind.
I have often said and written that in some important respects America is the least democratic country in the world because what passes for democracy there is for sale to the highest bidders (the Zionist lobby being one of them). It’s now apparent that former President Jimmy Carter agrees.
