An Interview With Alan Hart
The following is an interview between a publisher and Alan Hart which should give you some insights on his outlook…
Alan, hundreds if not thousands of books have been written about what is loosely termed the Arab-Israeli conflict, why do you feel that yours will enable readers – many for the first time – to have real understanding of what it’s all about and how to stop what you’ve called the countdown to Armageddon?
The souvenirs I most treasure from my television reporting days are signed photographs of the two greatest opposites in all of human history – Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. Arafat signed with his “best wishes”. Golda’s inscription in her own hand was to Alan Hart, “a good friend.” Because I am a goy (non-Jew), the old lady’s inscription meant, and still means, a great deal to me. I think I might be the only person on planet Earth to have enjoyed intimate access to both of them. What I think these photographs symbolise is my empathy with both sides: with the unspeakable but real fear of the Jews – that they could one day be the victims of another holocaust: and with the anger, humiliation and despair of the Palestinians (and most Arabs and Moslems everywhere) on account of the massive injustice that was done to them by Zionism and, today, U.S. support for Zionism’s child, Israel, right or wrong. The answer to your question is, I think, in my very real empathy with both sides.
But surely it takes more than empathy to stop an Armageddon?
Look – what a resolution of this conflict and permanent peace has always needed is some truth-telling…Truth-telling about, for example, how actually this conflict was triggered and what has sustained it and put peace beyond the reach of diplomacy. The fact is that throughout the Western (mainly Judeo-Christian) world, what passes for understanding of the conflict is constructed on Zionist mythology. The greatest of all of Zionism’s myths being that poor little Israel has lived in danger of annihilation. That simply is not true, but it has allowed Israel to get away with having its aggression perceived where it mattes most (in America and Western Europe) as self-defence. To date it has not been possible to tell the truth because the mainstream publishing world, like much of the mainstream media as a whole, has been frightened of offending Zionism. To offend Zionism is to invite, among other things, the charge of anti-Semitism and, because the slaughter of six million Jews was a Gentile not an Arab or Moslem crime, there is nothing Gentile publishers, writers, broadcasters, and politicians, fear more than being accused of anti-Semitism – even when the charge is politically motivated and false and amounts to blackmail to prevent informed and honest debate. I say the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, with global fall-out, is now so dangerous that the truth has got to be told. In recent years bits of it, the truth, have appeared in other books. What makes my book different from all others in substance is that it’s the first ever attempt at a comprehensive telling of the whole historical truth. I saw it as a project, ambitious in the extreme I know, that somebody had to take on; and I dared to presume that I was equipped to have a go because of my experience of the conflict over nearly 40 years and, above all, my empathy with both sides – the fear of one and the anger, humiliation and despair of the other.
Your book is different from most, if not all others, in more than substance. It’s a weighty tome in two volumes, but it’s written with great passion and in earthy, everyday language, which makes an epic but complicated story both very readable and accessible to all. This suggests you have a particular view of who you think your book should appeal to…?
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