Alan Hart

Alan Hart, our beloved father, passed away yesterday at the age of 75.

Although his passing was sudden, he had been unwell for the last few years. We thought we had lost him a year ago, but he got better and was able to continue working for peace and unity in the world.

He went into hospital yesterday morning and, whilst he remained unresponsive, his heart remained strong for as long as it could. But in the early afternoon, a calmness came over him, vital signs began failing and a body shut down shortly followed.

We were there to hold him, say our goodbyes and support each other.

The human body – his home no more.
His energy, essence and spirit – well & free.

We sincerely thank all of you for the trust, friendship and support you all showed and shared over the years. We know that he appreciated it very much and so do we.

Thank you,
Susie Hart
(Daughter)

p.s. We are compiling an album in memory of Alan that will be present at the funeral and then kept by Nicki (his wife, our mum) in the family home. If you would like to contribute a reading, a poem, a photo, a memory or any other form of appreciation for Alan, his life and works, please provide it as comment below or email it to [email protected] (as soon as possible). We welcome your contribution.

The following is the text of a presentation I made last week to audiences in Sardinia on the occasion of the publication of Volume One of the Italian edition of my book ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS. (It and the German edition are being published by Zambon, a publishing house owned and led by a very brave and courageous German Jewish gentlemen. Giuseppe Zambon). Brainwashed and idiotic Zionists in Sardinia tried and failed to have some of my lectures and debates cancelled by accusing me of being an anti-Semite who is inciting anti-Semitism. They knew nothing about my book and its contents and were reading from Zionism’s script. Their efforts resulted in increased sales of my book! … continue reading

I must begin with a clarification. “The world” of my headline is inhabited only by our so-called leaders and their governments, not the civil societies of nations. And the complicity of our so-called leaders and their governments in Zionism’s crimes is in my view more by default out of fear of offending Zionism than design. But that doesn’t make the complicity any less real in effect. … continue reading

It’s not too much of a secret that Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a Trump-like megalomaniac and a tyrant with few equals, is happy to do dirty work for Israel. And it may now be that he is … continue reading

My headline is a response to recent comments made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint press conference in Berlin with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the decision of the Cameron government in the UK to make boycotting goods from “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank” by publicly-funded bodies including local councils and universities a criminal offence.

Much to the delight of Netanyahu who has rejected a French initiative to convene a regional conference to try to get a peace process going, Merkel said, … continue reading

Before I offer my own answer here’s a quick review of how things are and look like going.

* President Obama is not going to use the leverage he has to cause or try to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians.

In the past I entertained some hope that in the last year of his second term he would do so, and there was quite a good reason for a small degree of optimism on my part. It was in what President Jimmy Carter once said to me. He explained that … continue reading

In a very interesting piece on his web site (Mondoweiss) Philip Weiss has speculated that the day is coming when American Jews will divorce Israel.

If it really happens the president of the day will be free to use the leverage America has to … continue reading

For several years I have been wondering, sometimes on public platforms and in writing, if Palestine is a lost cause. I have now come to the conclusion that as things are it is and will remain so unless the Palestinians, the occupied and … continue reading

When Republican Representative Devin Nunes informed the media that the House Intelligence Committee of which he is chairman will look into the Wall Street Journal report that the U.S. spied on (bugged)  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during the discussions and negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran, he said, … continue reading

As only readers of the Israeli newspaper Ha-aretz know, when Israel’s President Reuven Rivlen was received at the White House on 9 December, President Obama said the following to him: … continue reading

Way back in July I wrote an article with the headline No sign of a coherent strategy for defeating perverted and barbaric Islamic fundamentalism. Four months and several jihadist atrocities on, and with still no sign, my conclusion is that Western leaders do not have the will to do what is necessary to put ISIS and its affiliates out of business because they don’t want to come to grips with the bottom line truth.

It can be summarised as follows.

ISIS and its affiliates are empowered by the hurt, humiliation, anger and despair of many who make up the Arab and other Muslim masses. It follows that the only way to erode support for ISIS and its affiliates and eventually put them out of business is by addressing this hurt, humiliation, anger and despair.

As I wrote previously, there are two prime causes of it.

One is American-led Western foreign policy for the Arab and wider Muslim world including its double standard as demonstrated by refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians.

In passing I note that in an interview with The Real News on 17 November, retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who was chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, said: “We’ve created too many problems in that region of the world. Most likely our invasion of Iraq started all this…”

And that was a view echoed in his own inimitable way by John Pilger in an article for Counterpunch on 17 November. He wrote:

“By most scholarly measure, Bush and Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of at least 700,000 people – in a country that had no history of Jihadism. The Kurds had done territorial and political deals; Sunni and Shia had class and sectarian differences, but they were at peace; intermarriage was common. Three years before the invasion, I drove the length of Iraq without fear. On the way I met people proud, above all, to be Iraqis, the heirs of a civilization that seemed, for them, a presence. Bush and Blair blew all this to bits. Iraq is now a nest of Jihadism.”

The other prime cause of Arab and other Muslim hurt, humiliation, anger and despair is the corruption, authoritarianism and repression of most if not all Arab and other Muslim regimes. (In most cases they are regimes supported/endorsed by American-led Western foreign policy).

It also follows that addressing these two prime causes is something that can’t be done with bombs and bullets. They only play into the hands of ISIS and its affiliates.

So if Prime Minister David Cameron succeeds in a second attempt to get the House of Commons to give him the green light for UK participation in the bombing of Syria, that, almost certainly, will only make matters worse. And probably guarantee that what recently happened in Paris will happen in London.

Though it is necessary. ramping up security and surveillance on our home fronts throughout the Western world may also be counter-productive to some degree if it leads (as it easily could) to Muslims feeling that they are being unfairly targeted.

What could American-led Western governments actually do to if they were willing to play their necessary part in addressing Arab and other Muslim hurt, humiliation, anger and despair?

As a priority that could endtheir double standard with regard to Israel by putting the Zionist state on notice that it will be isolated and sanctioned if it continues to demonstrate nothing but contempt for international law and its lack of interest in justice for the Palestinians.That really would give Western foreign policy a degree of credibility and respect and by doing so assist the process of eroding support for ISIS. and its affiliates.

On Palestine John Pilger had this to say in his Counterpunch article.

“The issue of Palestine is the region’s most festering open wound, and the (I would say an not the) oft-stated justification for the rise of Islamic extremism. Osama bin Laden made that clear. Palestine also offers hope. Give justice to the Palestinians and you begin to change the world around them.”

But the single most important thing Western governments could and should dois use their leverage to persuade Arab and other Muslim leaders that it really is time for authoritarianism to give way to something approaching democracy. If Arab and other Muslim leaders agreed (no matter how reluctantly), this would rob ISIS and its affiliates of their most persuasive argument – that the Arab and other Muslim masses have nothing to gain from politics and non-violent demands for change.

What I find deeply troubling is that President Obama knows that the corruption, authoritarianism and repression of Arab and other Muslim regimes is a prime cause of the rise and growth of ISIS and its affiliates. An opinion piece he wrote for the Los Angeles Times included the following.

QUOTE

Groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better.

Governments that deny human rights play into the hands of extremists who claim that violence is the only way to achieve change. Efforts to counter violent extremism will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies. Those efforts must be matched by economic, educational and entrepreneurial development so people have hope for a life of dignity.

UNQUOTE

I quoted those fine words in my July article and commented that there was no sign of a policy to give them substance.

Given that Obama and presumably other Western leaders are aware of the bottom line truth as I have summarized it above, the question in need of an answer is this. … continue reading

My headline takes me back 35 years to the day when I had a remarkably frank (honest) conversation in Tel Aviv with then retired Major General Shlomo Gazit, the very best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence. I put to him my conclusion that … continue reading

In his major speech at Cairo University on 4 June 2009 which he labelled as marking “a new beginning” in the relationship between the Islamic world and the West, President Obama described the. Palestinian situation as “intolerable”. And he put flesh on that bone by saying, “They endure the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”

He also said the only resolution of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel “is … continue reading

There is one thing above all others that must happen if there is ever to be a peaceful resolution of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel on the basis of justice for the Palestinians and security for all.

What is the one thing? … continue reading

The incidents which have marked the escalation of violence in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and have included the killing of a few Israeli Jews should not be viewed and considered in isolation. They have a context and it can be summarised as follows. … continue reading

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was right about one thing (and only one thing) when he addressed the UN General Assembly. “Israel’s values,” he said, “are on display every day.”

Indeed they are, clearly visible in … continue reading

As the worst refugee crisis since World War II and one with the potential to overwhelm Europe as well as Lebanon and Jordan was gathering momentum (as it still is), the headline over an article in The New York Times by Roger Cohen was Obama’s Syrian Nightmare. Cohen’s opening shot was, “Syria will be … continue reading

There is a strong case for saying that Palestine is a lost cause. And it, the case, can be summarised as follows.

* The nuclear-armed Zionist (not Jewish) state of Israel is the regional superpower and not remotely interested in … continue reading

Palestine: One state for all or a final Zionist ethnic cleansing?

The headline over a recent article in The Times of Israel by the paper’s Middle East analyst, Avi Issacharoff, was The end of the two-state solution. And the strapline (secondary headline) underneath that was a quote from the body of his article. “It’s time to say it out loud: The Israeli right has won – a temporary, pyrrhic victory that has set Israel on the path to becoming a Muslim-majority state.”

Issacharoff’s opening thoughts were the following.

QUOTE

Conditions are now such that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank has already become impossible.

And here it must be said: The watershed line seems to have been crossed. The two-state solution is no more.

No Palestinian state will exist here beside the State of Israel.

UNQUOTE

He went on to ask if anyone believes that an evacuation of (illegal) Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank is possible. His own answer was the following (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

During the disengagement, the Israeli army managed to evacuate the settlers from Gaza in just a few days. But there were fewer than 10,000 settlers then, and the army looked different as well. Does anyone seriously think that the army in its present form – an army that has undergone such significant social transformations over the past two decades, whose best officers are members of the religious Zionist movement and live in the settlements – can carry out a task of that nature? The idea seems so unrealistic as to be ludicrous.

UNQUOTE

What Issacharoff didn’t say is that the real reason for Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was the need to do some defusing of the ticking demographic time-bomb of occupation.

In reality the two-state solution was never on from the moment the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 on 22 November 1967.

The Six Days war of June of that year was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense. Given that fact (as opposed to Zionist propaganda to the contrary), and that 242 did emphasize “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”,the resolution ought to have demanded that Israel withdraw from all occupied Arab territory without conditions. It didn’t. But there was more to the Security Council’s surrender to Zionism than that.

An early draft of 242 required Israel in exchange for peace to withdraw from “the territories occupied in the recent conflict.” By definition that meant withdrawal from all Arab territory grabbed in the 1967 war. But at Zionism’s insistence, which the Johnson administration in America endorsed, the definitive article (“the”) was dropped from the final text of the resolution; and that left Israel free to interpret the resolution as it wished and determine the extent if any of its withdrawals from newly occupied Arab territory. In other words, 242 put Zionism’s monster child in the driving seat and effectively gave Israel’s leaders a veto over any peace process.

It also has to be said that 242 was by default a Security Council green light for Israeli settlement/colonization of newly occupied Arab territory. How so? Resolution 242 ought to have put Israel on notice that if it proceeded with illegal settlement it would be condemned and sanctioned. It didn’t.

Why did the Security Council surrender to Zionism?

My summary answer, which was endorsed in private by one of the senior British diplomats who participated in the drafting of 242, is the following.

Those responsible for framing Resolution 242 were very much aware that Israel’s hawks were going to proceed with their colonial venture come what may – in determined defiance of international law and no matter what the organised international community said or wanted. Sosome if not all of those responsible for framing 242 were resigned to the fact that, because of the history of the Jews and the Nazi holocaust, Israel was not and never would or could be a normal state. As a consequence, there was no point in seeking to oblige it to behave like a normal state – i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN.

My own complete awakening to the impossibility of an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 lines to make the space for a Palestinian mini-state came during a private conversation I had with Shimon Peres in early 1980 when he was the Labour opposition leader to Menachem Begin’s Likud government. At the time I was in the process of becoming the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

As I revealed in Goodbye to the Security Council’s Integrity, the title of Chapter 3 of Conflict Without End?, the sub-title of Volume Three of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the following is what Peres said to me (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

I fear it is already too late (for peace). Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what he’s doing (by expanding his settlement programme on the West Bank as fast as possible). He’s creating the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Jewish prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jewish people (out of occupation).

UNQUOTE

At the time Peres was hoping to replace Begin as prime minister after Israel’s next election and he added, “I’m not” (going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jewish people out of occupation).

The obvious question contains its own answer. If it was too late in 1980 when they were only about 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers, how much more too late is it today when there are in excess of 500,000 and with that number rising on a daily basis?

Back now to Issacharoff’s statement that Israel is on a path to becoming “a Muslim-majority state.”

His assumption seems to be that when the Palestinians become the majority in the Greater Israel of today, Zionism will accept that it has failed to cause the occupied Palestinians to surrender to its will by making life hell for them and say something like, “We are ready to concede that the only solution is one state with equal rights and security for all.”

Is that, really, likely to happen?

In theory that might it a possibility IF there was American-led, real pressure on Israel and IF that resulted in a significant majority of Israel’s Jews seeing the need for them to do what is in their own best interests. (I really do believe that the Jews are the intellectual elite of the Western world and the Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. And that’s why I am convinced that what they could do together in peace and partnership in one state is the stuff that dreams are made of. They could also change the region for the better and by doing so give new hope and inspiration to the world).

But I think there is a much more likely scenario.

To prevent the Palestinians becoming the majority in the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and thus to kill even the most remote prospect of a one state solution, Israel’s leaders resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing.

As I have indicated in previous articles, I believe that would guarantee the transformation of the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism (Jew hatred) and set in motion another great turning against Jews everywhere, possibly starting in America.

And that is perhaps what Netanyahu and those of Israel’s leaders to the lunatic right of him really want to justify in their own deluded minds (1) a decision to tell the whole world to go to hell; and (2) an announcement that Israel is prepared to go nuclear – launch its nuclear missiles – if it is pushed too far.

The only faint ray of hope I can see is what could happen in the White House when Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby and its allies fail to secure enough votes in Congress to override an Obama veto on their efforts to kill America’s participation in the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. Such a significant and humiliating defeat for Zionism could open the door for Obama to say to Israel: “Enough is enough. I am now going to use the leverage I have to try to cause you to do what is in your own best interests as well America’s.”

That could happen but will it? On a scale of 0 to 100 I put the chances of it happening at 5.

The quote above is from a Mondoweiss article by Avigail Abarbanel with the headline It’s time for American Jews to recognize that they have been duped (by Zionism).

Who is Avigail Abarbanel? … continue reading

My headline question was provoked by Netanyahu’s response to the P5+1 agreement with Iran which he called “an historic mistake” and an editorial in The New York Times described as being “clearly in the best interests of the US and the other nations that draftedit and Israel.” (My emphasis added).

The NYT’s editorial view was subsequently endorsed in a letter signed by more than 100 former US ambassadors and then a statement signed by 60 former senior officials and lawmakers with extensive national security experience. Then came the UN Security Council’s unanimous adoption of a resolution endorsing the nuclear deal with Iran and paving the way for the lifting of sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

On the battle to come the headline over a story in The Times of Israel put it this way. AIPAC girds for rare high-noon showdown with White House.

The first question arising is this. Does Netanyahu really believe that with AIPAC’s assistance he can mobilize Zionism’s election campaign funders and those in Congress who do their bidding to kill the deal?

Unless he is completely out of touch with the way things are moving in Washington D.C, Netanyahu must know there is no chance of Congress coming up with the two-thirds majority necessary to over-ride an Obama veto of legislation to kill the deal.

So what, really, is Netanyahu’s game plan for America?

The only answer I can think of is that he is reconciled to the fact that a growing number of Democrats in Congress are no longer prepared to do the Zionist state’s bidding when doing it is clearly not in America’s own best interests. Even Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for the 2016 race to the White House, felt that gave her the freedom to endorse the deal with Iran. She said, “With vigorous enforcement, unyielding verification and swift consequences for any violations, this agreement can make the United States, Israel and our Arab partners safer.”

In that light it seems to me Netanyahu’s game plan is to say and do whatever he thinks will assist the Republicans to rubbish President Obama and win the White House in 2016, in the hope that a Republican president will kill the deal.

If that is the hope in Netanyahu’s deluded mind it is no doubt being encouraged by the statements of all the Republicans who are offering themselves as presidential candidates.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has said, for example, that it will be “up to Obama’s successor to overturn the deal”. He added that if he is the next occupant of the Oval Office, he will re-impose sanctions on Iran.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said “Iran is now empowered to annihilate Israel.”

Former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida is also in the leading Republican pack which asserts that Iran does want to possess nuclear weapons. He said Obama’s deal with it is a failure because “it only delays Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. He called the deal “dangerous and short-sighted”. He added, “This isn’t diplomacy – it’s appeasement.”

Unless they are unaware of the findings of America’s various intelligence agencies and/or have chosen to ignore them, they must be aware that Iran is not developing a nuclear bomb and does not want to possess nuclear weapons. And unless they are completely stupid they also know that even if Iran did possess a few nuclear bombs at some point in the future the idea that it would launch a first strike on Israel is ludicrous in the extreme. To do so would lead to Iran’s annihilation in a retaliatory strike and no Iranian leader would be mad enough to invite such a catastrophe.

Why then are all the Republican would-be presidents speaking from Netanyahu’s script and dancing to his tune?

The short answer is in two parts.

The first is their ignorance. I mean that they have no knowledge of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. They are completely unaware, for example, that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force. (As I explain and document in detail in my three-volume book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the Arab regimes, despite some face-saving and stupid rhetoric to the contrary, never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. The notion that Israel has lived and still lives in danger of annihilation, the “driving in the sea” of its Jews, is Zionist propaganda nonsense at its brilliant best. Zionism’s success in selling it to the political and mainstream media institutions of the West is the reason why a diplomatic resolution of the conflict has been and remains a mission impossible).

The second is their hunger for Zionist campaign funds. On the Republican side the biggest single donor is casino-owning Sheldon Adelson, estimated by Forbes to be worth $29.4 billion. Last year he and his wife Miriam reportedly contributed $100 million to help the Republicans retake the Senate. In recent months it has become clear that any Republican thinking of running for the White House needs Adelson’s blessing as well as his money, and that’s why some say he now effectively “owns” the Republican party.

For the sake of discussion let’s assume for a moment that the next American president is a Republican (Jeb Bush or some other). Would he actually do what Netanyahu and Adelson want and kill the deal with Iran?

I think the answer is almost certainly … continue reading

In Western political and mainstream media circles the great debate about what must be done if perverted and barbaric Islamic fundamentalism (PBIF) is to be contained and defeated is heating up. But nobody participating in this debate (be it President Obama or Tony Blair or whoever) wants to come to grips with the real issue. In my view the question that takes us to the heart of it is the following. … continue reading

My headline question was provoked by an Uri Avnery article with the headline BDS The New Enemy. After noting that Netanyahu’s whole career has been based on fear mongering and in recent years his promotion of … continue reading

Still today, 48 years on, there are relatively few people who know the whole truth about how Israel set the stage for war in June 1967 to grab more Arab land. The single most decisive event that made war inevitable happened on Thursday 1 June, four days before Israel launched its attacks. What was it? … continue reading

It was written by Gideon Levy, the conscience of Israeli journalism, in an article for Ha’aretz, and here it is. … continue reading

The man now calling the shots for Israel’s Palestine policy is not Prime Minister Netanyahu but Naftali Bennett, the leader of the Jewish Home party, who has declared and means that there are no circumstances in which he would ever agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Without the Jewish Home party’s participation Netanyahu would not have been able to … continue reading

In a letter calling on EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini to promote and implement a 2012 plan to mark produce and products for the European market place from the Israeli occupied West Bank, 16 EU foreign ministers stated that what they are requesting is “an important step in the full implementation of EU longstanding policy in relation to the preservation of the two-state solution.”

If that’s what they truly believe, the 16 who signed the letter – they included the foreign ministers of Britain and France but not Germany – are clearly out of touch with reality because the two-state solution has long been dead, killed by Israel’s on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing by stealth.

There are, of course, two other possible explanations.

… continue reading

Though it is provocative and contentious I think my headline is appropriate for an article about an Israel in the process of committing suicide. I’d also like readers to know that the inspiration for my headline was an observation made by Uri Avnery, the Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. In his latest post which called for the formation of an Israeli Salvation Front, he wrote: “The country is in existential danger. Not from the outside, but from the inside.” (That’s the way it was for the passengers and crew on Germanwings Flight 9525). … continue reading

“Love him (Netanyahu) or hate him, this is the face of Israel.” That’s how Uriel Heilman concluded an article for the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) on Netanyahu’s election victory after noting that he had shown his true colours by declaring that there would be no Palestinian state while he is in charge. What President Obama now has to decide is … continue reading

If I had to express my hope in one sentence it would be this. A fourth term as prime minister for Netanyahu would see Israel becoming more and more isolated and could improve the chances of Western governments being moved to use the leverage they have to cause the Zionist (not Jewish) state to end its defiance of international law and denial of the Palestinian claim for justice.

Another way to put it would be to say … continue reading

My Chambers dictionary defines farce (a noun) as “comedy of extravagant humour, buffoonery and improbability”; and farcical (the adjective) as “comical, risible, ludicrous. ridiculous.” Those are my terms of reference for this very short article on Netanyahu’s address to the political whorehouse known as the Congress of the United States of America.

His portrayal of an Iran on course to possess nuclear weapons for the purpose of annihilating Israel, plus the standing ovations and the applause his performance received, might well have pleased enough brainwashed Israeli Jews to vote in ways that guarantee he will emerge from Israel’s upcoming elections in a position to cobble together the next coalition government and serve a fourth term as prime minister.

In my view that was his prime purpose in soliciting the backdoor invitation to address Congress.

His other purpose was to inspire enough members of a Congress – a two-thirds majority is required – to override a presidential veto on new legislation for more sanctions on Iran. His sales pitch to Congress included this. “If Iran threatens to walk away (if Congress brings in legislation for more sanctions), call their bluff. They’ll be back. They need a deal more than you do. You have the power (with additional sanctions) to make them want it more.” Contrary to what he said, Netanyahu knows that more sanctions would cause Iran to walk away and stay away, thus killing any prospect of a deal and a new beginning with Iran that President Obama and the other P5+1 leaders really want.

What Netanyahu really wants, as do more than a few of his deluded allies in the Republican party and all the neo-cons, is war, an American war, on Iran.

To understand why Netanyahu’s fear mongering is farcical it’s not necessary to get bogged down with the question of whether or not Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. (It isn’t and all Western intelligence agencies know that. Israel’s own intelligence agencies also know that and some former Israeli intelligence chiefs have said so publicly).

The answer to just one question is enough, more than enough, to expose Netanyahu’s assertion about the threat Iran poses to Israel’s existence for the propaganda nonsense it is.

The question? Even if Iran did possess a few nuclear bombs, would its leaders be mad enough to launch a first strike on Israel?

Answer? Of course not because to do so would invite the complete destruction of their country.

Update

In a refreshingly honest editorial today Ha’aretz says the following about Netanyahu and all of Israel’s politicians.

“All of them are ignoring the real existential threat to Israel and its ability to survive as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’: the unending occupation of the territories. Israel’s insistence on ruling over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank who lack civil rights, expanding the settlements and keeping residents of the Gaza Strip under siege is the danger that threatens its future.”

Is he a smooth-talking, disingenuous, cunning salesman who knows that everything he asserts about Israel being in danger of annihilation and not having a Palestinian partner for peace is propaganda nonsense, or, does he really believe what he says?

Before I offer my own thoughts here’s a quote from London-based Jamie Stern-Weiner who co-founded the New Left Project. In a recent article published by Mondoweiss he wrote this: … continue reading

If perverted and violent Islamic fundamentalism (PVIF) in all of its manifestations is to be contained and defeated there’s one thing above all others that must happen – Western leaders, starting with President Obama, must open their minds to the fact that consequences have causes and then address the causes.

There are two main and related causes of PVIF.

(1) American-led Western foreign policy for the Arab and wider Muslim world including its double standard as demonstrated by refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its defiance of international law and rejection of the Palestinian claim for justice.

(2) The corruption, authoritarianism and repression of most if not all Arab and other Muslim regimes. In most cases they are regimes supported/endorsed by American-led Western foreign policy.

1 and 2 cause/provoke Muslim hurt, humiliation, anger and the despair of no hope. Generally speaking these feelings do not of themselves turn Muslims into killers/terrorists or even supporters of those who do the killing and/or order it. The real problem is the exploitation and manipulation of these feelings by deluded/mad preachers and other self-styled leaders who misinterpret and pervert Islam for their own purposes.

Regarding (1) above… There are some commentators who assert that American-led Western foreign policy created Al-Qaeda and ISIS. I think a more accurate summary statement of what happened is that American-led Western foreign policy created the environment and the conditions in which PVIF could emerge and grow.

Fawaz Gerges put it this way:

“Between 2003 and 2010, the power vacuum and armed resistance triggered by the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as the dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s former ruling Baath party and the Iraqi army, provided a fertile terrain for Al-Qaeda’s growth and an opportunity to infiltrate the increasingly fragile body politic.”

He added, and I agree with him, that ISIS is “a manifestation of the breakdown of state institutions, dismal socio-economic conditions and the spread of sectarian fires in the region.”

John Feffer’s take on events, with which I also agree, is that “ISIS is decidedly a homegrown product of the turmoil that has engulfed two states: Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003 and Syria since the aborted Arab Spring uprising that began in 2011.”

I stand by the view I expressed when President “Dubya” Bush had a premature political ejaculation and claimed victory in Iraq. I wrote at the time that he and Prime Minister Tony Blair were the best recruiting sergeants for violent Islamic fundamentalism. (The question arising is did they know what they were doing – I mean were they committed to the neo-con agenda and wanting to create an enemy, or, were they just ignorant and stupid?)

Regarding (2) above… With words President Obama himself has gone some way to acknowledging that the corruption, authoritarianism and repression of Arab and other Muslim regimes is one of the main causes of the rise and growth of PVIF.

In an editorial for the Los Angeles Times the day before the opening in Washington D.C of the three-day summit on combating extremism he wrote:

QUOTE

Groups like al Qaeda and ISIL exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better.

Governments that deny human rights play into the hands of extremists who claim that violence is the only way to achieve change. Efforts to counter violent extremism will only succeed if citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies. Those efforts must be matched by economic, educational and entrepreneurial development so people have hope for a life of dignity.

UNQUOTE

Unfortunately they were only words. And the question I would put to Obama is this. Can you name me one Arab country in which citizens can address legitimate grievances through the democratic process and express themselves through strong civil societies?

An honest reply would be “NO!”

If President Obama and other Western leaders were prepared to get to grips with the causes of PVIF instead of addressing only its consequences, there are two things they could do to vastly improve the prospects of containing and defeating it.

One would be to use their influence with leverage as necessary to persuade Arab leaders that it really is time for authoritarianism to give way to democracy. If Arab leaders agreed (no matter how reluctantly) this would rob PVIF of its most persuasive argument – that the Arab and other Muslim masses have nothing to gain from politics and non-violent demands for change.

The other would be to use as necessary the leverage they have to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law. The double standard of Western foreign policy which allows Israel to commit crimes with impunity is the cancer at the heart of international affairs. If it was cured a major cause of Arab and other Muslim hurt, humiliation and anger would be removed, and that would make closing the vast majority of Arab and other Muslim hearts and minds to PVIF propaganda a mission possible.

The above should not be taken to mean or imply that I have more than the smallest amount of hope that Western leaders will have the good sense to come to grips with the main causes of PVIF. I am only saying what I think could happen if they did.

Much is currently being written and broadcast about what a headline in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed to be The Return of Anti-Semitism (loathing and hatred of Jews). It was over an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain. According to him “An ancient hatred has been reborn.” He went on:

“Some politicians around the world deny that what is happening in Europe is anti-Semitism. It is, they say, merely a reaction to the actions of the state of Israel, to the continuing conflict with the Palestinians. But the policies of the state of Israel are not made in kosher supermarkets in Paris or in Jewish cultural institutions in Brussels and Mumbai. The targets in these cities were not Israeli. They were Jewish.”

In an article for TIME under the headline It’s Time To Stop Ignoring the New Wave of Anti-Semitism, Michigan born-and-based Rabbi Jason Miller quoted Sacks and was more explicit in his assertion that an ancient hatred has been reborn. (As well as being a rabbi Miller is the president of an IT and social media marketing company). He wrote:

“I certainly have the capacity and amplification to voice my concerns about the threat of anti-Semitism, this time around emanating not from Nazism, but from Islamism… As Rabbi Sacks makes perfectly clear, the rise of anti-Semitism in the 21st century is not about anti-Israel sentiment… Plain and simple, 21st-century anti-Semitism is the continuation of the same Jewish hatred that has raised its ugly head for centuries. It is the same anti-Semitism that we saw 70 years ago in Europe as 6 million Jewish men, women and children were exterminated.”

In my Gentile view Rabbis Sacks and Miller and all who think like them are in complete denial of the link between Israel’s actions which sometimes amount to state terrorism and the transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism.

What this link is was put into words more than a quarter of a century ago by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a long-serving Director of Israeli Military Intelligence. (I have quoted his warning in several of my previous posts but what he wrote bears repeating, again and again and again). In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, which contained his call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, and his statement that the biggest real threat to Israel is its self-righteousness, he wrote the following.

QUOTE

We Israelis must be careful lest we become not a source of pride for Jews but a distressing burden. 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. In the struggle against anti-Semitism, the frontline begins in Israel.

UNQUOTE

Another way of saying that an ancient hatred has been reborn is that what used to be called the “sleeping giant” of anti-Semitism is waking up. Putting it that way makes understanding possible and here’s why.

After the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, this giant went back to sleep and might well have died in its sleep if Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers to have its way and Israel had been required to be serious about peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all.

To avoid being misunderstood I must qualify that statement.

There will always be some Jew haters and Nazi holocaust deniers. (I accept that there is room for debate about the number of Jews who were exterminated but I regard Nazi holocaust denial as an evil on a par with the mass murder of Jews and others). So what I mean when I say the sleeping giant of anti-Semitism might well have died in its sleep is that it would not have come back to life again as a force capable of seriously threatening the wellbeing and security of the Jews.

The evidence which gives great weight to that analysis can be obtained from just a few moments of reflection about the history of the whole of the second half of the 20th century and much if not all of the first decade of the 21st. What stands out with regard to the Jews is the wellbeing of those who were/are citizens of the Western nations. They were not only secure, they had influence in political, economic and many other spheres out of all proportion to their numbers. (Which is why, generally speaking, I have always regarded the Jews as the intellectual elite of the Western world. And that in turn is why I am amazed that most Jews allowed themselves to be brainwashed by Zionist propaganda and are beyond reason on the matter of justice for the Palestinians as a consequence).

It was Israel’s “misconduct” (what a charming Harkabi euphemism for defiance of international law, on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing by stealth!) that set in motion the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism which, as he warned, is showing signs of a creeping transformation into anti-Semitism.

Put another way, it was Israel’s policies and actions which guaranteed that the sleeping giant would not die in its sleep and would wake up to go on the prowl again.

In its recent report the Community Service Trust (CST) said the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK doubled in 2014 – up from 513 in 2013 to 1,168, of which 81 were violent. The non-violent ones included what the CST described as a widely shared image of Hitler with the caption “Yes man, you were right.”

What was the biggest factor behind the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK? In the CST’s own words it was “anti-Semitic reactions to the conflict in Israel and Gaza.” In its own way that finding is surely an indicator that Israel’s policies and actions are the prime cause of the transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism. It also underlines Harkabi’s point that Jews need to understand “that foreigners’ criticism of Israel stems not only from opportunism, hatred and anti-Semitism, but from what they may see as fair and moral considerations.”

My conclusions?

The only people who can stop the transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism gathering momentum are the Jews themselves, with those who are citizens of the European nations and America taking the lead.

How could they do it?

Short answer – by declaring that Israel does not speak for or represent them and that they condemn its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians.

If they don’t do that there will most likely be a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine followed at some point by a wide awake sleeping giant of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again.

If it really is the case that the sleeping giant of anti-Semitism is waking up, it’s time for European and American Jews to wake up to the fact that the title of my book – Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews – is what Ilan Pappe described it as being… “THE truth in seven words.”

A longer version of my headline would be this. How President Obama could take on and defeat the Zionist lobby and secure for himself the freedom to put America’s own best interests first in the Middle East and wider Muslim.

In the course of a prime time address to his fellow Americans, Obama could do it with just one sentence. This one.

“To our Jewish citizens I have to say the time has come for you to decide whether you are Americans first or not.”

More on that in a moment.

At the time of writing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress (I think they are best described as traitors) are on a collision course with the Obama administration.

The issue is the determination of Netanyahu and his collaborators to wreck the prospect of a comprehensive agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme. The wrecking mechanism is a new bill under discussion for more sanctions on Iran.

Here’s what Obama said on this subject in his State of the Nation address (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran; secures America and our allies – including Israel; while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict. There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran. But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails – alienating America from its allies; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn’t make sense. That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. The American people expect us to only go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.

UNQUOTE

Hours later Republican John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, issued an invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress (the House and the Senate) for the unstated purpose of mobilizing enough senators to override an Obama veto of a new bill for more sanctions on Iran. (There are 100 senators and to override an Obama veto the Republican majority with 54 seats would need the support of 13 of the 44 Democrats and 2 Independents).

When Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress in May 2011 he got 29 standing ovations, four more than Obama was given during his State of the Nation address earlier that year. (The loudest and most prolonged applause was for Netanyahu’s declarations that Israel will not return to the 1967 borders; that there will be no right of return for the Palestinians; and that an undivided Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel).

According to the very well informed Robert E. Hunter, Boehner was set up to invite Netanyahu by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. If so it’s more than reasonable to assume that Netanyahu himself was the originator of the idea.

When he addresses both Houses of Congress on 3 March he will have two main objectives.

One will be to put fire into the bellies of enough members of Congress to guarantee that, if necessary, an Obama veto on a bill for more sanctions on Iran will be overridden. In other words he will be seeking to demonstrate that he not the president is the boss.

The other will be to improve his chances of remaining prime minister after Israel’s forthcoming elections by taking some wind out of the opposition’s sails. That wind is being generated by a significant number of Israeli Jews who don’t want Netanyahu to continue as prime minister because they believe, with very good reason, that he is putting Israel’s special relationship with America at great risk. When he returns to Israel he imagines he will be able to say something like, “It’s true that my relationship with President Obama is not so good, but I command much more support than he does where it matters most – in Congress.”

Behind closed doors at the White House, which was not consulted, the invitation for Netanyahu to address both Houses of Congress provoked extreme anger. One unnamed official told Ha’aretz that Netanyahu had “spat ” in President Obama’s face. (Two weeks previously Obama telephoned Netanyahu to demand that he toned down his pro-sanctions rhetoric). Also revealed was that the “chickenshit” epithet with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s intentions came in.

The reasons why Obama wants a comprehensive agreement with Iran, which I believe is there for the taking subject only to America agreeing not to drag out the ending of all sanctions on Iran, include the following.

* He knows that Iran is NOT developing nuclear weapons and does not want to develop them. (It follows that he also knows Netanyahu has been playing the Iranian nuclear threat card with great success to take attention away from Israel’s on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank).

* He fears, with very good reason, that if the prospects for a comprehensive agreement with Iran are sabotaged, its hardliners may well demand that Iran changes course and develops nuclear weapons for deterrence. (These hardliners know that the Bush-Blair war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would not have happened if it had possessed nuclear weapons). In other words, and as Obama also knows, the sabotaging of a comprehensive agreement with Iran could set in motion a doomsday scenario in which an American president could be manipulated into going to war with Iran, a war that would have catastrophic consequences for the region and, almost certainly, the whole world.

* He knows that America needs Iran’s assistance if ISIS and other forms of violent Islamic fundamentalism are to be contained and ultimately defeated.

* He knows that American big business wants a comprehensive agreement with Iran because it is fully aware that European big business is fed up with the sanctions on Iran and could well break ranks with the U.S. and do wealth-generating and job-creating business with it if a comprehensive agreement is sabotaged by Zionism and its stooges in Congress and the mainstream media. In that event Europe not America would have the lion’s share of the lucrative business to be done with Iran for many years to come.

In summary Zionist lobby prisoner Obama has a complete understanding of why it is in the best interests of America that a comprehensive deal with Iran is done.

If the time comes when it seems that the Zionist lobby will have the Senate votes needed to override a presidential veto on a new bill for more sanctions on Iran, Obama will have a choice: either to surrender to Zionism’s will and become complicit by default in the betrayal of America’s own best interests, or, to take the Zionist lobby on and defeat it.

My view is that he could set in motion a change of political dynamics to ensure the Zionist lobby’s defeat by taking to the bully pulpit – going over the heads of Congress with a prime time television and radio address in which he would spell out, explicitly, why it is in America’s own best that a comprehensive deal with Iran be done.

He could also point out that even if the day did come when Iran possessed nuclear bombs, the notion that it would use them to launch a first strike on Israel is ludicrous because doing so would invite Iran’s complete destruction. On this point he could add that those in Congress who insist that Iran poses a threat to Israel’s existence are recycling Zionist propaganda nonsense.

That said Obama could then deploy his rhetorical nuclear bomb – a statement to the effect that it is time for American Jews to decide whether they are Americans first or not.

And he could put flesh on that bone by adding something like this.

“The question our American Jewish citizens need to come to grips with is the following. Is it acceptable that a lobby which represents the views of less than a quarter of America’s Jews, and by no means speaks for all Israeli Jews, can cause Congress to defy policies enunciated by the elected president of the United states and commander-in-chief of its armed forces?”

If I was drafting a bully pulpit speech for Obama I would have him add that while he understood and empathised with American and European Jewish fears that anti-Semitism is on the rise, he could not leave unsaid the fact that the prime cause of the creeping transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism is Israel’s behaviour – its defiance of international law and all that comes with it, including on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank and brutal rejection of the Palestinian claim for an acceptable amount of justice.

QUESTION. How would Jewish Americans respond if the Zionist lobby continues its campaign to kill the prospect of a comprehensive agreement with Iran and President Obama confronted it in the way I have suggested above?

While I was thinking about the answer I read an open letter to President Obama by the Jewish American writer David Harris-Gershon. As published by Tikkun Daily it reads as follows (my emphasis added).

QUOTE

You don’t know my name, though you know the names of those who represent hundreds of thousands of American Jews who, like me, publicly support your diplomatic efforts with Iran.

And while you don’t know my name, you know that I and those like me represent  52 percent of U.S. Jews who support your diplomatic efforts over those presented by Congressional Republicans and Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who are now shamelessly working, behind your back, in concert to undermine your administration’s historic gains.

As the leader of Israel, Netanyahu often claims to speak for all Jews, absurdly conflating his political ideals with those of American Jewry. But he does not speak for most of us. Indeed, there are over three million American Jews for whom he does not speak. Over three million voices in the American Jewish community who reject current efforts to scuttle historic nuclear negotiations with Iran. Who reject efforts to undermine peaceful diplomacy. And who reject John Boehner’s outrageous breach of protocol by inviting a foreign leader to deliver a response to your State of the Union address.

I know you are rightly outraged, viewing Netanyahu as having spat in your face  after your consistent defence of Israel on the international stage. I know that you and officials in your administration feel as though there should be consequences for what is about to transpire on March 3, when Netanyahu will rise before Congress as the leader of a foreign ‘ally’ and publicly reject your diplomatic efforts for political gain back home.

This, in my view, should be the consequence: the amplification of ‘pro-Israel’ voices like mine in the American Jewish community who reject Netanyahu, be it for his desire to bomb Iran, his desire to continue Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians or his expansion of settlements and rejection of peace.

I’m not actually asking for a personal invitation to the White House, though I would certainly not turn one down. What I’m asking is that you invite American Jewish leaders and activists to the White House on March 3 to publicly amplify those liberal and progressive voices Netanyahu claims to represent. I’m asking that you use this as an opportunity to reveal to the American public that most American Jews see Netanyahu as a harmful force, both in Israel, in the Middle East and in the world. I’m asking that you give us a chance to support your diplomatic efforts with Iran passionately and eloquently as Congress rises repeatedly to applaud Netanyahu’s damaging rhetoric.

And after you have done so, I ask that you invite civil leaders and activists in the Iranian-American and Palestinian-American communities in order to amplify their pro-diplomacy, pro-peace voices.

The New York Times calls what Israel and the GOP have done to be a disrespectful “breach of sense and diplomacy.” What NYT editors did not say is that this breach is an opportunity, now that the hole is gaping, for you to counter Netanyahu’s voice with powerful ones which exist within the nation you lead.

I ask that you let us help you lead.

Best,
An American Jew

UNQUOTE

I agree with Harris-Gershon. Netanyahu, the Zionist lobby and Boehner have overplayed their hand to such an extent that they have created an opportunity for Obama to take them on. If he does the result will be what Harris-Gershon is calling for – an amplification of American Jewish voices which reject Netanyahu and all he represents and the support of a significant (possibly overwhelming) majority of America’s Jews for Obama’s efforts to secure a comprehensive agreement with Iran. And that would be a major and very public defeat for the Zionist lobby, a defeat which I think would mark the beginning of the end of its ability to call the policy shots.

It should be noted that even Fox News (repeat even Fox News!) lashed out at Netanyahu for his “egregious snub of Obama”. Anchorman Chris Wallace said he was shocked and called Netanyahu’s move “wicked.” He also said he thought Netanyahu’s strategy was “very risky”.

It is but I hope it’s a risk Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby won’t back away from because they can be beaten, thanks to the incredibly arrogant and stupid way they have overplayed their hand.

Footnote

In the Fox News discussion with Chris Wallace from which I quoted anchorman Shep Smith made the following comment.

QUOTE

George Bush used to say “You must stop the expansion of the settlements,” so what does Israel do? They move on with expanding the settlements. This president says, “You gotta stop expanding the settlements,” and they just keep expanding the settlements.” It seems like they think we don’t pay attention and that we’re just a bunch of complete morons.

UNQUOTE

That was more or less my opinion of the Fox News presenters, but if they are now coming to grips with the fact that Netanyahu is dangerously deluded and is, as Harris-Gershon put it, harmful in Israel, the Middle East and the world, I’ll revise my opinion.

Britain’s Home Secretary Theresa May has declared that “We must all redouble our efforts to wipe out anti-Semitism here in the United Kingdom.” In her view and that of her government colleagues this means more must be done to combat violent Islamic fundamentalism in all of its manifestations. The problem with this way of thinking and policy making, which all Western governments have in common, is that it ignores the fact that the prime cause of the transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism is Israel’s defiance of international law and brutal rejection of the Palestinian claim for justice.

A warning that anti-Israelism could and most likely would be transformed into anti-Semitism was sounded more than a quarter of a century ago by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former Director of Israeli Military Intelligence. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, published in English by Harper and Row in 1986, he wrote this:

“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.”

The Israeli “misconduct” of Harkabi’s warning can be seen today for what it is – on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank which includes the theft of more and more Palestinian land and water and the demolition of more and more Palestinian homes and olive trees; plus the on-going process of making life hell for the Palestinians of the besieged Gaza Strip.

It is this “misconduct” that has provoked and propelled the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism which is now showing early signs of being transformed into anti-Semitism.

The conclusion invited, in my view an irrefutable conclusion, is that by their refusal to call and hold Israel to account for its defiance of international law. all the governments of the Western world are assisting the transformation of anti-Israelism into anti-Semitism.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has every reason to be grateful for this assistance because he knows better than anybody else that Zionism needs anti-Semitism to justify Israel’s policies and actions.

Footnote

Harkabi’s warning was, in fact, an echo of fears expressed by very many Jews of the world before the Nazi holocaust. Prior to it most Jews, American and British Jews in particular, were opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise. They knew it was morally wrong. They believed it would lead to unending conflict. But most of all they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way it would one day provoke anti-Semitism.

It was the Nazi holocaust that caused most Jews to throw away their moral compass.

The headline over my last post on 29 December was For the occupied and oppressed Palestinians UN means Useless Nations. The following day the Security Council itself confirmed my analysis by refusing to consider a resolution submitted on behalf of the Palestinians calling for an end to Israeli occupation within three years. Lawyer John V Whitbeck then hit the nail on the head with the statement that the Security Council had demonstrated that “it is as much of a whorehouse as the U.S. Congress.” In this post I am going to suggest what I think must now happen if Palestine is not to become a lost cause.

My starting point is that the Palestinians have nothing concrete to gain from seeking to advance their cause through the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even IF it did determine that Israel (as well as Hamas for “balance”) had a case to answer for war and other crimes, the Zionist state’s leaders would ignore the court’s findings and the U.S. would prevent action to call and hold Israel to account.

Although they have the right in international law to resort to force to resist occupation, the Palestinians also have nothing to gain and much more to lose from violence. Palestinian violence on a significant scale would give Israel’s leaders the pretext to speed up their ethnic cleansing programme and even, perhaps, to go for a final ethnic cleansing.

So what must happen if the dynamics of the conflict are to be changed to give the Palestinians real hope that their almost super human steadfastness, their refusal to surrender on Zionism’s terms, will deliver them an acceptable amount of justice?

The assumption on which my answer is based is that only the major powers have the leverage to cause Israel’s leaders to end their defiance of international law and become serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

The problem is that governments are not going to use this leverage unless and until they are PUSHED to do so by public opinion – by manifestations of real democracy (citizen concern and care) in action.

In America for example, and as I put it in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, nothing is going to change unless and until members of Congress are more frightened of offending their voters than they are of offending the Zionist lobby and its allies.

According to a poll for the Brookings Institution last November, U.S. public opinion is shifting. When asked for their preferred solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, 34% of those Americans polled said their government should push for one state with equal citizenship. That was up from 24% the previous year.

Also worthy of note is that among those who support a two state solution, 66% said they would support one state if two states were not possible.

The key question is this.

What can be done to give greater and unstoppable momentum to the pushing process underway in America and Europe to cause governments to use the leverage they have to end Israel’s defiance of international law and oppression of the Palestinians?

In my view what is needed most of all is the dissolution of the Palestine Authority and handing back to Israel complete responsibility and accountability for occupation.

This would impose significant economic, security and other burdens on Israel and its leaders would respond in the only way they know how – with more and more brutal repression of the occupied Palestinians. Yes, that would mean more suffering of all kinds for them but it would also an add fuel to the slow burning, global fire of anti-Israelism.

In other words, the more an arrogant, sickenly self-righteous and brutal Israel demonstrated its contempt for international law and its rejection of the Palestinian claim for justice, the more the pushing process required to cause governments of the major powers to act would gather momentum.

For their part the occupied and oppressed Palestinians could help to sustain this momentum with peaceful demonstrations across the occupied West Bank and throughout the Gaza Strip open prison camp. For maximum impact in Europe and America I think the demonstrations should be silent with the message of the demonstrators conveyed by placards held aloft. The messages would include “End the occupation!” and “We want our freedom!”

Something like that on at least a weekly basis would convey a powerful message to the outside world and all the more so if the IDF and armed illegal Jewish settlers sought to break up peaceful and silent Palestinian demonstrations with tear gas and bullets.

Then there’s the question of Palestinian leadership. After the dissolution of the PA who could provide it and what form should it take?

Initially the PLO Executive Committee would provide it but much, much more than that is required if the Palestinians are to be enabled to speak to power with one credible voice.

The need is for the Palestinian diaspora to become politically engaged and put its act together for the purpose of bringing the Palestine National Council (PNC) back to life.

Once upon a time this now side-lined parliament-in-exile represented Palestinians almost everywhere in the world and was the supreme decision-making body on the Palestinian side. It was not without flaws but it was more democratic than not and that’s why the authoritarian Arab regimes feared it. Even Arafat at the height of his power was accountable to the PNC. (It did, in fact, take him six long years to persuade a majority of PNC delegates to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel. That happened towards the end of 1979. The PNC vote in favour of Arafat’s policy – the two-state solution – was 296 for it and only four against. From then on the Palestinian door was open to peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief).

For the PNC to be brought back to life there would have to be elections to it in communities throughout the Palestinian diaspora as well as the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The composition of the Palestinian diaspora by countries and numbers of Palestinians resident in them is roughly the following. Jordan – 2,900,000; Israel – 1,600,000; Syria – 800,000 Chile – 500,000; Lebanon – 490,000; Saudi Arabia – 280,245; Egypt – 270,245; United States – 270,000; Honduras -250,000; Venezuela – 245,120; United Arab Emirates – 170,000; Germany -159,000; Mexico – 158,000; Qatar – 100,000; Kuwait – 70,000; El Salvador – 70,000 Brazil – 59,000; Iraq – 57,000; Yemen – 55,000; Canada – 50,975; Australia – 45,000; Libya – 44,000; Denmark – 32,152; United Kingdom – 30,000; Sweden – 25,500; Peru – 20,000; Columbia – 20,000; Spain – 12,000; Pakistan – 10,500; Netherlands – 9,000; Greece – 7,500; Norway – 7,000; France – 5,000; Guatemala – 3,500; Austria – 3,000; Switzerland – 2,000; Turkey – 1,000; and India – 300.

The prime task of a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC would be to debate and determine Palestinian policy and then represent it by speaking to power with one credible voice.

If the Palestinian diaspora does not become politically engaged to bring the PNC back to life I think it is more than possible that future honest historians will say that by default it betrayed the occupied and oppressed every bit as much as the Arab regimes have done.

Without a new strategy along the lines I have suggested above to change the dynamics of the conflict and how it is perceived in America and Europe I really do believe that Palestine will become a lost cause.

There will be some who will say (as a few Israeli Jews have said) that the Zionist state is in the process of committing suicide and that justice for the Palestinians is one day inevitable.

Perhaps, but just as likely, in my view more than likely, is that the coming years will see an exodus of Jews from Israel leaving behind a neo-fascist hardcore which will be prepared to threaten the region and beyond with nuclear destruction.

And on the basis of what Prime Minister Golda Meir said to me in an interview I did with her for the BBC’s Panorama programme, it would not be an empty threat. I asked her to clarify a point she had made. I said: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure I am understanding what you have just said. You did mean that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the world down with it…?”

Without a pause for thought she replied in her gravel voice, “Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying!”

I must begin by making it clear that the UN of my headline is the Security Council not other component parts of the world body such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) which provides education, health care and social services for more than five million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip prison camp, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

As a new year dawns I believe that those who are entertaining hope that the cause of justice for the Palestinians will be advanced by another Security Council resolution are guilty of wishful thinking. They may also be unaware of the history of Zionism’s success in corrupting and subverting the decision making process of the General Assembly as well as the Security Council. (This history, complete and unexpurgated, flows through the three volumes of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

The corruption and subversion started in the countdown to the vote on the General Assembly’s Partition Plan resolution of 29 November 1947. The vote was postponed twice because Zionism calculated that there was not a majority in favour of partition. Then, assisted by its assets in President Truman’s White House and 26 of its collaborators in the Senate, Zionism bullied and bribed a number of vulnerable nations to change their “No” votes to “Yes” or abstain. The result was a minimum necessary majority in favour of partition but… When President Truman refused to use force to impose it, the resolution was vitiated (became invalid); and the option Truman approved was sending the question of what to do about Palestine back to the General Assembly for another debate. It was while this debate was underway that Israel, in defiance of the will of the organized international community as it then was, unilaterally declared itself to be in existence.

When Truman learned how Zionism and its collaborators had rigged the partition vote, he wrote the following in an angry memorandum to Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett. “It is perfectly clear that pressure groups will succeed in putting the United Nations out of business if this sort of thing is continued.”

Many years later a long serving, very senior and universally respected UN official said the following to me in his office on the 38th (top) floor of the UN’s headquarters in New York. “Zionism has corrupted everything it touched, including this organization in its infancy.” I knew, really knew, that he was reflecting the deeply held but private view of all the top international civil servants who were responsible for trying to make the world body work in accordance with the ideals and principles enshrined in its Charter and international law.

The Security Council’s complete surrender to Zionism happened during the protracted and at times angry behind-closed-doors discussions about the text of Resolution 242 – what it should and should not say. (The full story of this surrender is told in Goodbye To The Security Council’s Integrity, Chapter 3 of Volume Three of my book).

The Johnson administration and all others responsible for drafting and then finalizing the resolution’s text were completely aware that the Six Days War of June 1967 was a war of Israeli aggression, not, as Zionism asserted at the time and still asserts today, a war of self-defence.

That being so Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 ought to have demanded an unconditional Israeli withdrawal and indicated that Israel would be isolated and sanctioned if it refused to comply. And for complete clarity of meaning a binding resolution ought to have stated that Israel should not seek to settle or colonise the newly occupied territories, and that if it did the Security Council would enforce international law and take whatever action was necessary to stop the illegal developments.

But President Johnson refused to have Israel branded as the aggressor.

(This was despite the fact that he was privately furious with the Israelis. He had given them the green light to attack only Egypt and their attack on Syria to take the Golan Heights for keeping provoked the Soviet Union to the brink of military confrontation with the U.S. Johnson was also fully aware that when Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan gave the order for his forces to attack the U.S.S. Liberty his intention was to sink the American spy ship and send all on board to a watery grave. As it happened on 8 June the Israeli attack on the Liberty with bombs, napalm, torpedoes and machine gun fire killed 34 members of the vessel’s crew and wounded171, 75 of them seriously. The Liberty was attacked to prevent it sending an early warning to the Johnson administration that elements of the IDF’s ground forces in Sinai were being turned around to reinforce an attack on Jordan and Syria. The full story is told in The Liberty Affair – “Pure Murder” on a “Great Day”, Chapter 2 of Volume Three of my book. Who described the attack on the Liberty as “pure murder”? Israel’s chief of staff at the time, Yitzhak Rabin. The “great day” comment was made by Dayan in a note to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.).

Though it did pay lip service to “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”, the final text of Resolution 242 (less than 300 words in all) gave the Israelis the scope to interpret it as they wished. It did so by stating that the establishment of a just and lasting peace should include the application of two principles

QUOTE

(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.

UNQUOTE

This wording enabled Zionism to assert that withdrawal was conditional on the Arab states recognising and legitimising Israel.

In addition Resolution 242 gave Israel the freedom to determine the extent of any withdrawals it might make. This freedom was secured by immense pressure from Israel and the Zionist lobby in all its manifestations which caused those responsible for the final wording of the resolution to drop the definite article “the” in (i) above. The wording of the draft text was (my emphasis added) “Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.” The meaning of that draft text was clear. Israel had to withdraw from ALL the Arab territory it grabbed in the Six Days War. But when Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby said that was unacceptable, those responsible for the final version of 242 replied in effect: “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”

So the question without an answer in the final text of 242 was – WHICH Israel were the Arab states required to recognise? An Israel withdrawn to its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or a Greater Israel – an Israel in permanent occupation of at least some Arab territory grabbed in that war?

Incredible though it may seem today, Resolution 242 did not mention the Palestinians by name. It affirmed only the necessity for “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.” Mentioning the Palestinians by name was unacceptable to Israel’s leaders and the Zionist lobby because it would have implied that they, the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, were a people with rights – rights far greater than what might be called the begging bowl rights normally associated in the public mind with refugees.

But there was more to it than that. At the time the Security Council was agonising over the text of 242, the three major Western powers, the U.S., Britain and France, were united on one thing – the view that the Palestine file was not to be re-opened because, if it was, they might one day have to confront Zionism.

Put another way, in November 1967 the major Western powers were hoping that re-emerging Palestinian nationalism could be snuffed out by a combination of Arab-and-Israeli military action (it was the security forces of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which made the first attempt to liquidate the authentic Palestine liberation movement led by Arafat) and compensation for refugees as necessary.

Security Council Resolution 242 was a disaster for all who were seriously committed to working for a just and lasting peace because, effectively, it put Zionism into the diplomatic driving seat.

Some years after 242 was passed I had a private conversation with a very senior British diplomat who participated in the drafting and finalising of it. At the end of our conversation I summarised my understanding of what he told me. He said my summary as follows was correct.

Those responsible for framing Resolution 242 were very much aware that Israel’s hawks were going to proceed with their colonial venture come what may -in determined defiance of international law and no matter what the organised international community said or wanted. So some if not all of those responsible for framing 242 were resigned to the fact that, because of the history of the Jews (persecution on and off down the centuries) and Zionism’s use of the Nazi holocaust as a brainwashing tool, Israel was not and never could be a normal state. As a consequence, there was no point in the Security Council seeking to oblige it to behave like a normal state - i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN. Like it or not, and whatever it might mean for the fate of mankind, the world was going to have to live with the fact that there are two sets of rules for the behaviour of nations – one rule for Israel and one for all other nations. In that light Resolution 242 was confirmation that the Security Council had a double standard built into it, and because the political will to confront Zionism did not exist, there was nothing anybody could do to change that reality.

At the time of writing an effort by the Palestine Authority is underway to get a new Security Council resolution calling on Israel to end its occupation within two or three years. But even if such a resolution was introduced and passed (not vetoed by President Obama) it would be meaningless unless it contained a commitment to Security Council enforcement action if Israel refused to comply.

What are the chances in the foreseeable future of a new Security Council resolution containing such a commitment?

In my view there is not a snowball’s chance in hell.

What President Truman feared could happen did happen. On dealing with the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel the Security Council was put out of business by Zionism.

It’s Israel’s Jews NOT the Palestinians who are trapped in their public narrative

In recent months nothing has made me more angry than an article written and posted on 11 December by Alon Ben-Meir with a headline that described the occupied and oppressed Palestinians as being Trapped In Their Public Narrative. It included this statement. “The Palestinians haven’t learned that they cannot have it both ways: demand a state of their own and threaten Israel’s very existence.”

My immediate response was this.

The only threat to Israel’s very existence is its on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank (ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth) and the sickening Zionist self-righteousness that justifies it.

The anger provoked in me by Ben-Meir’s article was accompanied by surprise at what he wrote because this Baghdad-born, Jewish gentleman, currently a professor of international relations and Middle East studies at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, is internationally respected and not without influence in the corridors of power. He is a passionate supporter of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and an outspoken critic of Israel’s leaders for ignoring it. (His post before the one I am debunking here was headlined How Netanyahu Committed Political Suicide, and the following was its opening sentence. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence on passing a bill that will define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is as disgusting as his denial that Israel is an occupying power.”)

The main purpose of Trapped In Their Public Narrative was to convey this message.

“Not withstanding the growing support of the international community, the Palestinians will be mistaken to assume that the international community will solve their conflict with Israel… Neither the Europeans nor the U.S. who enjoy certain leverage with Israel will be able to force the hand of any hardcore right wing Israeli leader… Only the Palestinians themselves can change the Israeli public perception.”

The flesh Ben-Meir put on those bones included the following.

QUOTE

The Palestinians’ constant acrimonious public narrative against Israel has and continues to damage their credibility in the eyes of many Israelis…They are now increasingly focused on evoking international sympathy for their cause, but have failed time and again to appeal to the Israeli public, which matters the most to realize their stated objective of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians appear to be trapped in their rancorous public narrative against Israel, even during the peace negotiations. Coupled with widespread anti-Israeli teaching in schools, regular media attacks and indoctrination in many public and private institutions, this is what Israelis see, hear, fear and believe.

The Palestinians fail to understand that they have nurtured persuasive anti-Israeli sentiment among the Palestinians and strong anti-Palestinian feeling among the Israelis, which is to the detriment of peace.

It is time for the Palestinians to re-examine the shifting political landscape in Israel and change course now, however incongruous that may be, because it is indispensable to their overall objective.

The Palestinians need to recognize that there is a psychological dimension to their conflict with Israel, traced back through decades of mutual hatred and mistrust. The frequent verbal attacks and the characterization of Israel as a racist and apartheid state only reinforce the Israelis’ resentment and distrust of the Palestinians.

The PA seems to ignore the fact that their constant anti-Israeli public sentiments play into the hands of the powerful right constituency while weakening the hands of the center and left-of-center, which represent the majority of Israelis.

The Israeli political parties from the center and left want to hear a language of reconciliation…The Palestinians cannot expect the Israelis to dismiss their public onslaught as empty rhetoric… Only the Palestinians themselves can change the Israeli public perception – not by mere political slogans but by demonstrating that they can be trusted and are a worthy negotiating partner.

The Palestinians must separate (draw a distinction) between the Israeli government and people. Every single Palestinian leader must carefully think about how his or her public utterances affect the Israeli electorate, especially during national elections. There is a steady shift to the right and maligning Israel during the campaign will only further strengthen the right and weaken the center and the left.

I am not naive to suggest that by merely changing their public narrative positively the Palestinians will instantly and dramatically alter the political map in Israel in favour of the left and center. But if the Palestinians want to realize statehood, they must change their rancorous narrative sooner rather than later, and the Israeli elections offer a unique opportunity to begin this shift.

UNQUOTE

I agree with Ben-Meir to the extent that between now and Israel’s election in March it would be a good idea for the Palestinians to remind Israel’s Jews, constantly and explicitly, that the ground on their side for peace on terms which a sane government of Israel would have accepted with relief was prepared 35 years ago by Yasser Arafat.

But also to be said is that the idea (implicit in Ben-Meir’s article) that only the occupied and oppressed Palestinians can bring Israel’s Jews to their senses and get them to understand the extent to which they have been brainwashed by their leaders is ridiculous.

In my view the most awesome flaw in Ben-Meir’s logic can be summarised as follows.

It assumes by obvious implication that Israel’s Jews are the victims in the story of Palestine that became Israel when, actually, and as the whole world is beginning to understand, they are the oppressors.

From that it follows, it seems to me, that it’s Israel’s Jews not the Palestinians who have got to make the first major move if there is ever to be peace based on justice for the Palestinians and security for all. And what does that first major move have to be?

AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT A TERRIBLE WRONG WAS DONE TO THE PALESTINIANS BY ZIONISM IN THE NAME OF ALL JEWS AND THAT THIS WRONG MUST BE RIGHTED.

At a recent BDS conference in Chicago Miko Peled said the following. “Palestinians are subjected to the inevitable brutality that comes with occupation and they are subject to racist laws that are designed to discriminate against them, to disenfranchise them, to take away their land and eventually get them to surrender completely or leave or die.” In the light of that reality how should votes in European parliaments to recognise a Palestine state be judged?

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If a non-Jew had coined the phrase “Judeo-Nazism” he or she would have been verbally crucified by Zionism’s attack dogs and the mainstream Western media. The actual inventor of it was Yeshavahu Leibowitz, one of the most outspoken and controversial Jewish intellectuals of modern times. He was once described as “the conscience of Israel.” Before he died in 1994 he said “Judeo-Nazis” were on the rise in Israel. If he was alive today I imagine he would say, “They are now in control.”

The question awaiting an answer in the coming days and weeks is whether or not those who do Judeo-Nazism’s bidding in the U.S. Congress will succeed in sabotaging the comprehensive agreement-in-the-making with Iran over its nuclear program.

When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that more time was needed to reach an agreement he said, “We would be fools to walk away.” He then appealed to Congress not to act in a way that could sabotage the prospects for a successful negotiation. He said, “I hope they will come to see the wisdom of leaving us the equilibrium for a few months to be able to proceed without sending messages that might be misinterpreted and cause miscalculation.”

The immediate response was a statement issued by three senators – John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte. It said:

“We have supported the economic sanctions, passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, in addition to sanctions placed on Iran by the international community. These sanctions have had a negative impact on the Iranian economy and are one of the chief reasons the Iranians are now at the negotiating table. However, we believe this latest extension of talks should be coupled with increased sanctions and a requirement that any final deal between Iran and the United States be sent to Congress for approval. Every Member of Congress should have the opportunity to review the final deal and vote on this major foreign policy decision.”

Unless they are totally ignorant and completely stupid McCain, Graham and Ayotte must be aware of the certainty that increased sanctions will cause Iran’s negotiators to walk away saying they will not be intimated, blackmailed and humiliated by America.

On the assumption that the three senators are not totally ignorant and not completely stupid, the conclusion has to be that they really do want to kill the deal-in-the-making even though it is in America’s own best interests. (In his analysis of the situation the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen said the reason why none of the negotiators wanted to walk away was that“the alternative to a deal might in the end turn out to be war“. I’ll add to that by saying it may well be war that McCain and other would-be deal wreckers really want).

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading Zionist lobby group which drafts the scripts from which many in Congress speak, came out with its own statement.

“Congress delayed enacting additional sanctions over the past year to give negotiations a chance. It is now essential that Congress take up new bipartisan sanctions legislation to let Tehran know that it will face much more severe pressure if it does not clearly abandon its nuclear weapons program. We urge Congress to play its traditional and critical role to ensure that a final agreement truly eliminates any path for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.”

THE FACT THAT IRAN DOES NOT WANT TO POSSESS NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS OF NO INTEREST TO ISRAEL’S JUDEO-NAZIS AND THEIR ALLIES IN AMERICA.

The possibility of war with Iran is obviously in the minds of other elements of the Zionist lobby.

In its statement following the announcement of the extension of negotiations the Iran task force of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which is co-chaired by Dennis Ross who held the Iran portfolio at the White House during a part of Obama’s first term, said this. “In addition to increasing economic pressure Washington should provide weaponry to Israel that would make its threats to attack Iran more credible.”

JINSA, a Washington-based, neo-conservative, pro-Israel right or wrong think-tank, was founded in 1976. Its advisory board includes Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen and James Woolsey; and before they entered the Bush administration Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith and John Bolton were on its Board of Advisors. The collective term I would use to describe that lot is war mongers.

Then came the contribution of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI). It was founded in 2010 and its board members include William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard. He is second to none in his unconditional support for Israel’s policies and actions. The ECI’s main mission seems to be intimidating critics of Netanyahu and damaging Obama.

Its statement included this.

“There’s no point waiting seven months for either another failure or a truly terrible deal. Congress should act now to re-impose sanctions and re-establish U.S. red lines that will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. To that end, such legislation must limit the president’s authority to waive sanctions, an authority the president has already signaled a willingness to abuse in his desperate quest for a deal with the mullahs.”

But the most anti-Obama, anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian rhetoric was that which spewed from the mouths of the idiots who addressed the gala dinner of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt near Grand Central Station in Manhattan.

The audience of more than 1,000 cheered wildly when ZOA president Mort Klein pointedly referred to the president as “Barack HUSSEIN Obama.” They all knew he was implying that Obama is a Muslim and not an American.

Klein also said “Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist like his predecessor Yasser Arafat” and “Hamas is a Nazi-like terrorist group whose charter calls for the murder of every Jew.” (There is no space in Klein’s deluded mind and the minds of all who think like him for the truths of history. One of them is that Arafat prepared the ground on his side for peace on terms any rational Israeli government would have accepted with relief 35 years ago. Another is the Hamas’s leaders have long been on the public record with the statement that Hamas would live in peace with an Israel withdrawn to its pre-1967 borders IF a two-state solution was available and IF Palestinian acceptance of it was confirmed by a referendum).

There was more wild applause for the description of Obama offered by Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, America’s biggest home improvement retailer with stores in all 50 states, across Canada and beyond. He described Obama as “A Chamberlain in the White House.” (Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister who thought that appeasing Hitler was the best thing to do. Today there’s a case for saying that all Western prime ministers and presidents think it is in their best interests to appease Judeo-Nazism).

According to Chemi Shalev’s report of the ZOA’s gala dinner for Ha’aretz, it was Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), who brought the audience “close to rapture.” He did so by describing Obama as “The most anti-Semitic president ever.” (That’s nonsense but it, nonsense, is what CUFI is all about).

In Shalev’s view the real star of the evening was Republican senator Ted Cruz who, in 2012, became the first Cuban American or Latino to be elected to Congress from Texas. He devoted much of his speech to what he asserted were his own accomplishments in defense of Israel, but his main point, contrary to the assessment of Israel’s own security chiefs as Shalev noted, was that “The threats to Israel have never been greater.” He added: We do not need leaders who speak empty words, we need leaders who will act.” (He either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care that the biggest real threat to Israel is its self-righteousness and its on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank).

Cruz is entertaining the hope that he will be the Republican frontrunner for 2016 race to the White House so his whole speech was a pitch for Zionist support, campaign funds especially. He must have been pleased when many in the audience rose to their feet chanting “Go, Ted, go!” (They meant go for the White House. I imagine Iranians and Palestinians would say go to hell).

My conclusions?

If the history of Zionism’s success to date in more often than not imposing its will on American foreign policy for the Middle East was the only guide to the future, there would be a case for saying it is possible, even probable, that the deal-in-the-making with Iran will be sabotaged. (According to a usually well informed source the main reason for the failure to conclude a comprehensive agreement by the 24 November deadline was that Iran was not satisfied with Kerry’s assurance as given that Obama would be allowed to deliver).

But there’s also a case for saying that the would-be deal wreckers in Congress have good cause to be very careful about what they actually do as opposed to what they say to remain in Zionism’s good books. This case rests on the fact that polls have been indicating that a majority of Americans are not only fed up with Congress and tired of war but that they want an agreement with Iran. As does American big business according to my sources.

One obvious implication is that if it was successful a Republican-led effort in Congress to kill the deal-in-the-making with Iran could seriously damage Republican election prospects in 2016. There’s much a rejected Iran could do to add to America’s problems in the Middle East, in Syria and Iraq especially and possibly even Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and many Americans would blame the deal wreckers in Congress.

Republican party leaders must be aware of what the future could be if there is no deal with Iran, and that’s why I believe that when Obama push comes to Zionist-driven Republican shove, there’s a chance – I put it no higher than 55 to 45 – that Obama will get his way and a comprehensive agreement will be concluded.

Footnote

If the deal is sabotaged, and if I was an Iranian, I would want my government to develop and possess a nuclear bomb or two for the purpose of deterrence. My logic would be that if Saddam Hussein had possessed nuclear weapons Iraq would not have been attacked and invaded. And that’s a logic that might well prevail in Iran if an agreement with the P5+1 is sabotaged.

For many years I have believed that unless America took the lead in doing whatever is necessary to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law and be serious about peace on the basis of justice for the Palestinians and security for all Europe would do nothing and, by default, go on being complicit in Israel’s ongoing colonization of the occupied West Bank. But a recent article by Daniel Barenboim, the Jewish and globally celebrated pianist and conductor and outspoken critic of Israel’s occupation, caused me to wonder if it’s time to forget about what America could but won’t do and focus on the need for Germany and Britain to put their act together and take the lead.

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Question: What’s the difference between the Zionist lobby in America and the Zionist lobby in Britain?

Answer: In America it gives money to politicians to make them. In Britain it denies them money to break them.

The headline in The Independent On Sunday was Labour funding crisis: Jewish donors drop “toxic” Ed Miliband (the son of Jewish holocaust refugees and the leader of the Labour Party). The headline over the same story in the newsletter of Jews for Justice for Palestinians was Rich Jews ditch Labour.

What is Miliband’s crime in the eyes of wealthy British Jews who have been contributing to Labour Party funds?

He condemned Israel’s last war on the Gaza Strip which he described as “wrong and unjustifiable.” He also accused Conservative Prime Minister Cameron of being wrong not to have condemned Israel; and he added that Israel was “losing friends in the international community day by day.” (Which is true).

Subsequently Miliband further offended British Jewish supporters of Israel right or wrong when he decided to whip the non-binding vote in parliament calling for the government to unilaterally recognise Palestine. On this he was opposed by a number of senior Labour MPs including at least two shadow cabinet ministers. They said he was changing Labour policy that recognition should only be given when a two-state solution had been negotiated. And they warned that Miliband’s stance would haemorrhage Jewish support. They were right.

The story in The Independent On Sunday was not quite as explicit as its headline. Its message was not that very many Jewish funders had already pulled the plug on funding for the Labour Party but that they were intending to do so.

One previous donor who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity said:

“There aren’t that many donors to the Labour Party these days, and certainly not the same number of Jewish donors. There is a lot of worry. I have been a Labour supporter all my life and I would like to see a Labour government, but, on the other hand, I’m not entirely sure I want to see Ed Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander in the Foreign Office.”

Another previous donor said that he and others had been asked by the Labour Party to arrange a fundraising dinner but had found no takers. He added:

“Miliband won’t get money. I can tell you that now.I was going to do a couple of dinners and invite prominent members of the community, who are quite wealthy, to raise funds. They just wouldn’t touch it. It was too toxic for them to even consider. There is a lot of reluctance to support Miliband financially, unfortunately.”

Wealthy British Jewish supporters of Israel right or wrong are obviously hoping that by resorting to this kind of blackmail they can stop the rot of anti-Israelism spreading further in British politics. They might succeed but their efforts could also be counterproductive (as almost everything Zionism does is) because Miliband’s condemnation of Israel struck chords with very many British people, and politicians of all parties are beginning to understand that they have got to listen to those whose votes they seek.

If I was advising Miliband I would have him say two things.

The first to previous Jewish contributors to Labour Party funds would be something like this.

“If you really care about Jewish values and the wellbeing of Jews everywhere, you should use your influence to try to cause Israel to end its defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms which would provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice and security for all.”

The second to the general public, the voters, would be something like this.

“The main problem for the Labour Party is not my leadership. The main problem is that our own neo-con, Tony Blair, destroyed the Labour Party. I am trying to rebuild it.”

I’ll begin my answer by saying that for some weeks I have been suppressing in my mind the conclusion that Palestine is a lost cause and that there is no point in me continuing to devote a great deal of time (as I have done for three decades) to writing books and articles which expose Zionism’s version of history – the version upon which the first and still existing draft of Western history is constructed – for the propaganda nonsense it mainly is. In other words I was close to concluding that I should close my Palestine file.

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British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said he is open to the idea that UK citizens who are jihadists and travel to Iraq or Syria to fight with ISIS could be tried for treason. (My guess is that rather than spending a great deal of money on trials he and his cabinet colleagues would prefer jihadists to be blown to pieces by air strikes). The question provoked in my mind by what Hammond said was this. Is there a case for considering treason charges against those members of the U.S. Congress whose unconditional support for Israel right or wrong drives policy in a direction that is not in America’s own best interests and, more to the point, endangers those interests?

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For me the most depressing thing about the debate in the British House of Commons on a non-binding motion to recognise Palestine as a state alongside Israel was that all MPs who participated, including those who made informed and honest contributions, still seem to believe that a two-state solution is possible. It isn’t.

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A recent opinion piece in Ha’aretz by Gideon Levy, the beleaguered conscience of Israeli journalism, speculated about what Prime Minister Netanyahu would have said when he addressed the UN General Assembly if he was remotely interested in peace with the Palestinians. It was headlined It’s all a daydream. In this article I’m going to share my daydream about what President Obama would say in a prime time address to his fellow Americans, after the November mid-term elections, if he wanted to earn his Nobel Peace Prize.

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The Obama administration or those who write its scripts must think that all of us who support the Palestinian claim for justice are stupid. It described Palestinian Authority President Abbas’s statement (during his speech to the UN General Assembly) that Israel’s last war on the Gaza Strip was a “genocidal crime” as “offensive and provocative” and one that “undermined peace efforts.” Peace efforts? There are no peace efforts to be undermined!

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In laying out his plans to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS, President Obama said this: “America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia, from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East, we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.”

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When I heard the news that Jewish American comedienne Joan Rivers had died, I recalled the images of a passing moment I had with her in the mid 1980′s when I was on a coast-to-coast public speaking tour of America to promote the message of my book ARAFAT Terrorist or Peacemaker? For a few moments I feared that I was going to be the cause of her death from a heart attack.

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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?

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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.

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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.”

Here is my speculation which was provoked by a headline in The Times of Israel over a report of remarks by Dan Shapiro, America’s ambassador to the Zionist state. The headline was Envoy says US will work to get Abbas back ruling Gaza after conflict over. According to the report Shapiro said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 News that the US wants to see Abbas’s Palestinian Authority restored to ruling Gaza and “will make efforts to bring this about.”

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As Jonathan Cook put it, “In the face of the enduring violence of Israel’s occupation, and the license it provides soldiers to humiliate and oppress, ordinary Palestinians have a stark choice: to submit or resist.” They are not going to submit but there is, it seems to me, an urgent need for the Palestinian David to rethink his strategy for resisting the nuclear-armed Zionist Goliath if hope for an acceptable amount of justice for his people is to be kept alive.

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In a recent article with the headline Charting A New Course, Alon Ben-Meir made the statement that “Only the Palestinians can modify and subsequently change the Israelis’ mindset.” The modification and subsequent change he hopes for would climax with a majority of Israel’s Jews insisting that their leaders stop being the victims of their own propaganda and make peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

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Could it be that the three Al-Jazeera journalists have been found guilty and each sentenced to seven years in jail to enable Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to pardon and free them in order to give the impression that he is a kind, forgiving man and not on his way to becoming the Arab world’s most ruthless and repressive tyrant?

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You have stated on your website and confirmed in an interview with the BBC that “We (presumably that’s you as prime minister and President Bush) didn’t cause the Iraq crisis.” The main cause of what is happening in Iraq today is, you said, the “predictable and malign effect” of the Western failure to intervene in Syria. And you are calling for unspecified intervention in Iraq. I presume you mean drone and other air attacks – war without American and British boots on the ground.

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The headline over an interview Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave to Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg was Netanyahu: There is nobody to negotiate with in Ramallah.

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Who was it? Justice Minister and chief negotiator (with the Palestinians) Tzipi Livni. What did she say?

On 9 May she said on Army Radio that Israeli settlements were to blame for the failure of peace talks. “The settlers want to prevent us from living a normal life and do not accept the authority of the law… Settlers are preventing us from reaching a resolution… Settlement construction makes it impossible to defend Israel around the world.”

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The conclusion to be drawn from the Obama administration’s predictable and predicted failure to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace process going is that the Zionist (not Jewish) monster state is beyond control. And the question arising is this. What are the real choices for the Palestinians?

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The headline over a presentation (http://jfjfp.com/?p=57943) by Jews for Justice for Palestinians of the text of a talk given by Norman Finkelstein to a number of British universities in mid-March was The End of Palestine? It’s time to sound an alarm. The purpose of this article is to do just that.

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In an article asserting that the BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) Movement is “irrelevant”, M. J. Rosenberg has written, under the headline The Goal Of The BDS Movement Is Dismantling Israel, Not The ’67 Occupation, “The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is two states for two peoples.” The question he chose to ignore – I wonder why? – is this: What are the most likely future scenarios if Israel’s leaders remain totally opposed to the creation of a viable Palestine state on all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with either East Jerusalem its capital or Jerusalem an undivided, open city and the capital of two states?

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A thought constantly in my mind, and which was reinforced by the Arab League’s 25^th Summit in Kuwait, is that with Arab leaders and governments as “enemies” the Zionist state of Israel does not need friends.

The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945. Its six founding member states were Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949) Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Today the Arab League has 22 members (though Syria’s membership has been suspended since November 2011).

Question: In terms of significant, positive contributions to regional and international affairs, what has the Arab League got to show for its 69 years of existence?

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On the face of it that’s a silly question and the speculation it represents – that Palestinian “President” Abbas could replaced by an Israeli agent or asset – is not worthy of discussion. But before dismissing it readers might do what I did and consider two things.

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A recent public opinion poll asked Americans which of two options they would favour if a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict was no longer on the table. (It is in the rhetoric of leaders and diplomats but not in reality). The two options were:

“The continuation of Israel’s Jewish majority (presumably this assumes permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and continuing ethnic cleansing of it by stealth) even if it means that Palestinians will not have citizenship and full rights.”

“One democratic state for all in which Jews and Arabs would be equal.”

Only 24 percent supported the continuation of things as they are.

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I have long thought that Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and the Palestine Legislative Council, is the most articulate spokesperson in Israeli occupied territory for her cause. Her latest comment is a bleak assessment of the prospects for getting a real peace process going. She was responding to a statement by an Obama administration official that both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas will be able to “express reservations about individual provisions” in the framework document Secretary of State Kerry is preparing. Here’s what Ashrawi said:

“A framework that allowed each side to voice reservations would be self-negating… Any document not based firmly on international law will become a box of chocolates. You can pick and choose what you want… Why have it? Is it just to maintain a semblance of progress? Is it meant to buy more time? Or is it not to admit we have failed?”

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Way back in October 2001, a prominent and widely respected liberal London rabbi, Dr. David Goldberg, made what I thought at the time was the most remarkable statement ever made by a Jew in the 53 years that had passed since the creation, mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing, of the Zionist (not Jewish) state of Israel. He said that Israel’s “colonization” of Palestine had left many Jews “questioning their unconditional support for Israel.” Then this: “It may be time for Judaism and Zionism to go their separate ways.”

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The expanded and most explicit form of my headline question is this. Is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of sound mind and knowingly talking propaganda nonsense about threats to Israel’s security in order to fool the world including most of its Jews, or, is he unbalanced, mentally disturbed, even clinically insane? I ask because his rubbishing in Davos of the most important speech any Iranian leader has made since the revolution which brought the mullahs to power 35 years ago sent me to bed recalling something my father said to me when I was a very young boy. “There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see.”

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Until recently I thought Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had no rivals in the business of talking propaganda nonsense (Israel’s Jews in danger of annihilation etcetera, etcetera, etcetera). But if there was a Nobel Prize for talking nonsense it does now seem that there would be a number of contenders.

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The answer to my headline question could be, not necessarily would be, “Yes” IF President Obama was prepared to put America’s own best interests first and use as necessary all the leverage he has to oblige Israel to accept that peace with the Palestinians requires a complete end to its occupation of the West Bank. With East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state or, preferably, Jerusalem an undivided, open city and the capital of two states, Israel back to its 1967 pre-war frontiers subject only to minor and mutually agreed border modifications is an Israel the Palestinians could and would make peace with. But…

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My last thought for 2013 is that for their failure to co-operate and coordinate to make the United Nations work to stop the slaughter and destruction in Syria, the leaders of the five permanent and controlling members of the Security Council – the U.S, Britain, France, Russia and China – are war criminals by default.

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Evidence that the mainstream media is not prepared to balance Zionism’s propaganda lies with the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel was on display in the BBC’s obituary tribute to David Coleman who died at the age of 87 on 21 December. The face and voice of BBC Television’s sports coverage for the best part of half a century, he was in Munich for the 1972 Olympics where, according to the commentary of the BBC’s tribute to him, “Arab gunmen held hostages and then killed the Israeli athletes.”

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The answer to my headline question is that he, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli jail where he has been since his arrest in Ramallah by an IDF unit in 2002, after which, in 2004, he was sentenced to five life terms in prison. Some months before his arrest one of Israel’s security agencies tried and failed to assassinate him. A missile was fired at his bodyguard’s car and killed the bodyguard. (If the attempt on Barghouti’s life had succeeded, his killers would not have been brought to justice because as well as bulldozing Palestinian homes and stealing Palestinian land and water, Israel kills, murders, with impunity).

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I don’t wish to offend readers other than perhaps those of the parties of my headline, but I have to say that it, the headline, was the first thought that came into my mind when I learned from the BBC that, according to leaks to the French media, a team of French scientists do not believe Arafat was poisoned and that he died of a “generalized infection.”

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Following the interim agreement with Iran the next six months will tell us whether or not the American-led Zionist lobby and Zionism itself has played its last card and lost. If it does lose President Obama will be free to use the leverage he has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept (and which would not pose any threat to the wellbeing and security of those Jews now living in Palestine that became Israel and who wanted to stay). The stakes could not be higher.

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The following is the text of the address I made to the Seek, Speak and Spread Truth Conference in London yesterday, 23 November. Its main thrust is about the need for citizens to become politically engaged to make democracy work (before it’s as dead as the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine) in order for our children and grandchildren to have the real prospect of a future worth having.

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His own explanation was that he wants to avoid or minimise the prospects for an “unnecessary confrontation” with the international community, for which read President Obama and the European leaders who would follow his lead (with the arguable exception of the French whore).

I think it’s more than reasonable to believe that Netanyahu was concerned, possibly even alarmed, by the explicit nature of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry’s condemnation on 6 November of Israel’s on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank.

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Here is a You Tube link to a nearly 50-minute radio conversation I’ve just had with Hanna Kawas, host of the “Voice of Palestine” in Canada. We covered a lot of ground in a most explicit way. One of the many topics we discussed was, to quote Hanna, the “dysfunctional Palestinian leadership”.

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For once Israel is telling a part of the truth. It was impossible for any of its own (Israeli-Jewish) agents to get into the rubble of Arafat’s compound to administer the poison that killed him. But they didn’t need direct access. Israel’s role was to provide the radioactive polonium for one of its collaborators in Fatah’s leadership.

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I was inspired (perhaps I should say provoked) to write this piece by something U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden said in his speech to the recent J Street National Conference in Washington DC. He recalled visiting Golda Meir when she was Israel’s prime minister and he was a junior senator. Her parting words to him were, he said, these: “We Jews have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: We have no place else to go.”

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The following is the text of an address I delivered to a conference in Geneva on Thursday 19th September.

The title of my contribution to this conference is taken from paragraph three of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. QUOTE “It is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law” UNQUOTE

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Will Masada II be the endgame?

I am withdrawing from the battlefield of the war for the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and the following is an explanation of why.

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The news of the death of Britain’s Iron Lady, Baroness Thatcher, prompted me to recall my favourite story about her. In 1980, in the first of her three terms as prime minister, she said in a speech to her Conservative Party’s Conference: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” Because I was personally engaged with her at the time, I know that she performed her first U turn in her first 48 hours of being prime minister.

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My answer is “No” but I think the question needs to be asked. It was provoked in my mind by a recent Ynet op-ed article by Ziv Lenchner, described as a left-leaning, Jewish Israeli artist. The headline over his piece was Israelis to Obama – we don’t care, don’t bother us.

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Is Obama thinking to himself “I wish I could push you under a bus”?

We now know that President Obama believes there is little or no prospect for peace in the Middle East unless enough Israeli Jews, in particular the young to whom he appealed directly, understand that the only way for Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic state is “through the realization of a viable and independent Palestine” and then insist that their government commits itself in negotiations to ending the occupation of the West Bank (now well into in its 45^th year).

By implication Obama has acknowledged that he does not have the will to confront the Zionist lobby in Washington D.C. and an Israeli government committed to ever expanding settlement, even when doing so is necessary to best protect America’s own interests.

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The headline over a recent op-ed article in the New York Times by Rashid Khalidi was Is Any Hope Left for Mideast Peace? The answer to that question might or might not be clear beyond dispute when the curtain comes down on President Obama’s performance in Israel-Palestine. (He’ll be on stage there on Wednesday for two days, mainly, it seems, to tell Israeli Jews what they want to hear, not what they need to hear).

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I find myself wondering how many of our present day leaders, President Obama in particular, are aware of what happened in Palestine that became Israel on 10 March 65 years ago today.

On that day in 1948, two months before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in defiance of the will of the organized international community as it then was at the UN, Zionism’s in-Palestine political and military leaders met in Tel Aviv to formally adopt PLAN DALET, the blueprint with operational military orders for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

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Dear Secretary of State,

I have a question for you.

Before you arrived in Turkey, its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told a United Nations forum in Vienna that the international community should consider Islamophobia as a crime against humanity “like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism.”

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There is one absolute pre-condition for ending the Israel-Palestine conflict by diplomacy and negotiations on the basis, as it would have to be, of justice for the Palestinians and peace with security for all. It is that the Jews acknowledge (1) that a terrible wrong was done to the Palestinians by Zionism in the name of all Jews everywhere – the terrible wrong being the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a process that continues to this day slowly and by stealth on the occupied West Bank; and (2) that this wrong must be addressed. THE question arising is this: Why are most Jews unable and/or unwilling to acknowledge the wrong done to the Palestinians?

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Short answer – both are grovellers (definition in a moment). The president of the United States of America grovels to the Zionist lobby and its neo-con and Christian fundamentalist allies. The Palestinian “president” grovels to Obama as well as Israel’s leaders more often than not. Obama and Abbas are, one could say, grovelling twins, but if there was the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for grovelling, it would have to be awarded to Obama. (If when he leaves office Israel is still able to impose its will on the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, I think he should hand back the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded).

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Those who want to see and hear how the traitors in the U.S. Congress read from the Zionist lobby’s script should go to http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33906.htm The performer in action, addressing the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs subcommittee of which she is chairwoman, is Cuban-born, Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She has represented Florida’s 27^th congressional district since 1989 and is the most senior Republican woman in the House.

Before I go further I’ll ask myself a question. Is it really fair to label those members of Congress who do the Zionist lobby’s bidding as traitors?

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In this shortish response to those in the comment space of my own web site and others including Veterans Today who criticised, ridiculed and condemned me for what I wrote in my last two posts (WANTED – A psychiatric diagnosis of Nazi holocaust denial, which was a follow-up to Understanding the real significance TODAY of the Nazi holocaust), I quote from a very long and in-depth interview with Samuel Crowell, the author of what some regard as the definitive books which make the case for Nazi holocaust revisionism.

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While I was reading some of the responses on various web sites to my last post (Understanding the real significance TODAY of the Nazi holocaust), the following question occurred to me. Does it really matter HOW Jews were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps? Even if you chose to believe that gas chambers were not part and parcel of the Nazi extermination programme, there is irrefutable evidence that Jews were shot, hanged, burned, injected and starved to death and, also, that many died from diseases that were only terminal because of the conditions of their incarceration.

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Did the Holocaust really happen?

I am writing this piece fully aware that it will result in me being reviled and condemned by some who read my articles on web sites other than my own (www.alanhart.net) and are fixated with Nazi holocaust denial and/or what is called “holocaust revisionism”, which is usually something less than complete denial.

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QUOTE An anti-Semite used to be a person who disliked Jews. Now it is a person who Jews dislike UNQUOTE

Those are the words of my dear Jewish friend, Nazi (Auschwitz) holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Myer. They are taken from page 179 of his magnificent book An Ethical Tradition Betrayed – The End of Judaism (published in 2007).

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Some of us do not believe what our politicians say especially when the subject is Israel’s behaviour – its ongoing colonization of the occupied West Bank for the purpose of making peace impossible except, perhaps, on terms which require the Palestinians to surrender to Zionism’s will. The responses of some Jewish supporters of Israel right or wrong to one British MP who did dare to tell the truth illustrate why most politicians throughout the Western world won’t. That’s yesterday’s story but I am driven to comment by the hypocrisy on display, hypocrisy which takes chutzpah to wild extremes.

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The following is the text of an address I delivered yesterday to a conference in London organized by the Palestine Return Centre on the subject of Britain’s Legacy in Palestine, which included a session on how to reverse the catastrophic consequences of the legacy. I was aware that what I was going to say would be uncomfortable listening for some in the audience, but almost all thanked me for saying what has to be said.

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I would like the headline to be a statement but it has to be a question.

As I write it looks as though the Zionist lobby realises that it overplayed its hand in smearing Chuck Hagel in the hope of causing President Obama to back off nominating him for the post defense secretary. The implication is not that the lobby’s stooges in the Senate will refrain from giving Hagel a hard time at his confirmation hearing, but that they will not risk, at least for a while, further public exposure as Israel Firsters by causing the nomination to be rejected.

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Moshe Feiglin, one of the most deluded and racist of those who make up the extreme right of Israeli politics and who is guaranteed his first seat in the Knesset after the upcoming election, has proposed what I imagine he regards as a nice way to complete Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

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One of the best articles I read in the whole of 2012 was published at the tail end of the year, on 30 December, by Ha’aretz. (As my regular readers know, I think Ha’aretz is the most honest newspaper in the world on account of its reporting and analysis of what’s really happening in the Zionist state). The article was written by Barak Ravid. The headline over it was Think tank: Israel’s poor international image not the fault of failed hasbara (the Hebrew word for explaining and advocacy, for which read propaganda). The subject of the article was the first report of a new Israeli think-tank, Molad, The Center for the Renewal of Democracy. Outside Israel there are probably very, very few people who have heard of Molad, so let’s start with what it is.

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By Alan Hart

Q: Mr. President, I’d like to begin this conversation with a quote from a recent article by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times. He wrote: “The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth.” If you were free to speak your mind to Israel, I mean Israel’s Jews, what would be your message?

A: I would tell them that no president, including this one, can save them from the policies and actions of their own leaders.

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By all accounts President Obama wants to nominate Chuck Hagel, the former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska to replace Leon Panetta at the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense, but a coalition led by the Zionist lobby is mounting a smear campaign against Hagel. Why? It hopes to persuade Obama that he would be foolish to nominate Hagel because he is unlikely to be confirmed by a Senate in which many members are content to do Zionism’s bidding in order to protect their own backs.

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The longer version of the headline question is this: Given the corruption of the American political system which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest lobby bidders, will any U.S. President (not only a second-term Obama) ever be able to shape and implement policies which best serve the longer term interests of all Americans rather than the short-term interests of the most powerful lobbies?

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Hey readers, I’ve got a scoop. It’s the text of a letter – don’t ask me how I got it – from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Hamas leader Meshal.

It was hand delivered in Gaza by one of Israel’s many Palestinian collaborators who lives there.

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Some and perhaps many will regard my headline question as offensive but I make no apology for asking it; and I take comfort from the fact that my decision to pose it is fully supported by one of my very dear Jewish friends – Nazi holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Meyer.

Before I ran my proposed headline past him, I was well aware that he believes, and has said in public, that the Nazis sought to dehumanize him in the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Zionists are seeking to dehumanize the Palestinians in their own land.

When I asked him if he thought my proposed headline question should be asked, he said “Yes, absolutely.” He added: “Zionism is to modern enlightened Judaism what Nazism was to Germany’s traditional ethical values.” (One of Hajo’s most important books is titled An Ethical Tradition Betrayed, The End of Judaism).

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In the song Mack the Knife there’s a line about a body on the sidewalk “oozing” life. Last night there was a body, a living one, oozing self-righteousness. It was not on the sidewalk. It was at the speaker’s podium in the General Assembly. It was that of His Excellency Mr. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, presenting lies as truth before the vote which overwhelmingly recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state.

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In the final countdown to the UN General Assembly vote on recognition of Palestine as a non-member state, the PLO has indicated that it’s expecting “a pleasant surprise”, it being the number of European countries which will not do Zionism’s bidding on this occasion and will vote for the resolution. Victory for the Palestinians in this forum can be taken for granted, and it will help to further isolate the Israel of Netanyahu as a pariah state, but… It won’t be, can’t be, a substitute for a viable strategy to secure justice for the Palestinians.

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It’s too soon to know whether the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be more than a sticking plaster to be ripped off by more violence whether provoked by Israel or not, but while we wait for events to give us the answer, there is a good case for saying that under Netanyahu’s leadership the Zionist (not Jewish) state has suffered a significant defeat.

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When Israel rained death and destruction on the Gaza Strip four years ago, Chris Hedges wrote the following. “Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and Naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks mosques and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armour, no command and control, no army and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is Murder. Images of dead Palestinian children lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza are a metaphor for the future. Israel will from now on speak to the Palestinians in the language of death.”

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There was a fascinating moment on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning when Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, answered a question honestly because he thought he was off the air. That was enough to cause a craven BBC (dictionary definition of craven – “cowardly”) to apologize for the fact that one its presenters had caught him off-guard. So what did he say?

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I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit (dictionary definition – “to throw up the contents of the stomach through the mouth”) when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians. The Israeli to whom I am referring is, of course, Australian-born Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, for which read spin doctor. The more I see and hear him in action, the more it seems to me that he makes Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief look like an amateur.

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When President Obama tried to get a real Middle East peace process going by calling on Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity and his “Yes, we can” became “No, we can’t”, I dared to invest some hope in the idea that in a second term he would use the leverage all presidents have to oblige Israel to end its defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. And that investment was not the consequence of mere wishful thinking on my part.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the General Assembly at the start of this week that “the door may be closing for good on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.” He added: “The continued growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory seriously undermines efforts toward peace. We must break this dangerous impasse.”

The truth of history, which most if not all world leaders know but dare not state, is that the door Ban Ki-Moon sees closing, was actually slammed shut 45 years ago. The precise date of the closure was 22 November 1967. What happened on that day?

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As the New York Times put it, “President Obama used his last major address on a global stage before the November election to deliver a strong defense of America’s belief in freedom of speech, challenging fledgling Arab and North African democracies to ensure that right even in the face of violence.”

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Yom Kippur, the Day Atonement, (25/26 September this year), is the holiest day in the Jewish year. On BBC Radio 4′s Thought for Today, Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, explained the significance of the day for Jews. He said, among other things, “We apologize for all the wrongs we’ve done and we seek forgiveness.”

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Even before his latest reported gaffe the polls were indicating that Romney will fail in his Zionist-backed bid to deny President Obama a second term in the White House.

After the Republican presidential candidate tried and failed to make political capital out of the killing of the American ambassador and three of his colleagues in Libya, Obama said (on CBS’s 60 Minutes) “Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later.” Staying with the shooting metaphor, it seems to me that with his latest gaffe Romney has shot himself in both feet and possibly elsewhere in his anatomy.

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In her first response to the killing of the American ambassador and three others in Libya, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she had asked herself the question that many Americans were asking – how it could have happened?

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A long version of the headline question would be something like this: Given that in the 46^th year of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank Jewish settlers are continuing to consolidate their hold on the territory’s land and water resources by stealing more and more of both, thus demonstrating not only Zionism’s contempt for international law but, also, that the only peace Israel’s leaders are interested in is one that requires a complete Palestinian surrender to Zionism’s will, is there any real prospect, in any foreseeable future, of justice for the Palestinians?

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I am sure that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is right when he says that Israel has not yet made up its mind about whether or not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The question is – What will most likely be the determining factor in the mind of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?

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The first question the headline begs is this: What is, or rather what could be, Israel’s worst?

In my opinion the short answer is this. In an effort to defuse the demographic time-bomb of occupation and close the Palestine file for ever, Israel resorts to a final round of ethnic cleansing, to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan and other neighbouring Arab states. (What about the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip prison camp? They are left to rot and will suffer the same fate as their West Bank brothers and sisters if they chose to stay and dare to threaten Israel’s security).

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According to reports in Israeli newspapers, the U.S. and Israel are going to hold their largest ever joint military exercise in October, shortly before American voters decide whether to give Obama a second term in the White House or replace him with Mitt Romney. The exercise, involving thousands of soldiers and the most advanced anti-missile defense systems, will simulate simultaneous attacks from Iran and Syria.

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On Thursday 8 June 1967, Israeli air and naval forces attacked America’s most advanced spy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, killing 34 of its crew and wounding 174. The lesson of this cold-blooded, murderous attack was that there is nothing the Zionist state might not do, to its friends as well as its enemies, in order to get its own way.

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In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations).

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As Ilan Pappe has said, most Israeli Jews have no idea of what they did to the Palestinians in 1948. (He also said that those who do know don’t think that what was done was wrong). But that’s only the tip of an iceberg of ignorance.

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The mounting public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by past and present members of the Zionist state’s defense and intelligence establishments triggered the recall of a comment made to me by one of its former Directors of Military Intelligence. The comment was: “If we had a government consisting of only former DMI’s, we’d have had peace with the Palestinians long ago.”

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Let’s start with a glance at what they do not have in common. The man now on trial for killing 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in Norway last July has admitted, even boasted about, what he did. Netanyahu denies Zionism’s crimes.

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By asserting that Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence (a ludicrous assertion) and beating the drums for war with it, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has succeeded in getting Palestine off the political and mainstream media agenda and winning more time for Zionism to consolidate its occupation of the West Bank. (As Barak Ravid noted in an article for Ha’aretz, “The Presidential election season in the United States is obviously an especially good time to enlarge settlements in the West Bank and strike new roots in the Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.”)

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If more proof was needed (some of us think it isn’t) that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu lives in a fantasy world that exists only in his own deluded mind, his latest verbal assault on the UN Human Rights Council for its decision to appoint and despatch an independent international fact-finding mission “to investigate the implications of the (illegal) Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” is it.

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The headline over an article in Ha-aretz by Bradley Burston on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s poker game with President Obama was If Obama wins in November, is Netanyahu in trouble? That’s a question I’ve had in my own mind for quite some time and it begs another. What, really, worries Netanyahu most – the prospect (not real) of Iran posing an existential threat to Israel or the prospect (real) of a second-term Obama?

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The Gentile me believes this question needs to be addressed because there is a very real danger that the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism, which is being provoked by Israel’s terrifying arrogance of power and sickening self-righteousness, will be transformed into anti-Semitism unless two things happen.

The notion that anti-Israelism could be transformed into anti-Semitism is not new. In his book Israel’s Fateful Hour, published in 1986, Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving Director of Military Intelligence, gave this warning:

“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.”

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Arising out the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite, the Nobel Prize is universally recognized as the most prestigious award in the fields of peace-making, economics, chemistry, physics, medicine and literature. How about an international award – without the gold medal, the diploma and the money – for hypocrisy?

Such an award could be called the Lebon Prize (reversing Nobel).

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There was a moment in a report from Tunisia by the BBC’s Wyre Davies when I could not stop myself laughing. I was listening to it on the Corporation’s generally excellent World Service radio. (In my view this particular BBC service is generally excellent because unlike all other BBC news and current affairs outlets, radio and tv, it often reflects some of the truth about what is happening in and over Palestine that became Israel).

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One very well informed and courageous Israeli who thinks the answer is “Yes” is Merav Michaeli, a radio and television presenter who also writes for Ha’aretz. She is completely without fear when it comes to telling it like it is. On 2 January this year, for example, she wrote: “The Israeli government doesn’t want peace. There’s nothing new in that. It has been the proven way since the establishment of the state.”

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One man who apparently thinks the answer is “Yes” is Andrew Adler, the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. (By the time this article of mine is posted will he be the former owner and publisher?)

In his weekly newspaper Adler listed three options for Israel “to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons”. (Never mind that, unlike Israel, Iran does not possess nuclear weapons and that the latest assessment of Israel’s intelligence community – an usually honest assessment – is that Iran has not yet taken a decision to go nuclear for weapons).

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The longer and complete form of the first question in the headline is – When is a terrorist not a terrorist in the eyes of the Obama administration (not to mention all of its predecessors) and the governments of the Western world?

Answer: When he or she is an Israeli Mossad agent or asset.

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The first headline I thought of for this article was The Zionization of American democracy and how it could be terminated, but then I said to myself: “Don’t be silly, Alan, there’s no democracy in the ‘Land of the Free.’”

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A longer headline would have added the words because of President Obama’s grovelling for Jewish campaign funding and votes.

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I often say that critics of Israel and America’s unconditional support for it are wrong to call the monster that has Congress by the testicles the “Israel lobby”. That description of it implies that it speaks for all Israelis. It does not and in Ha’aretz recently there was a remarkably good analysis of what’s happening in Israel which illustrates, proves, my point. Its author is Ari Shavit, a senior correspondent and member of the newspaper’s editorial board. The headline over his piece is the one above.

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It’s now clear that the Republican frontrunner in the race for the White House is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Officially the two Republican frontrunners are Newt “the Palestinians are an invented people” Gingrich and Mitt “Obama has pushed Israel under a bus” Romney.

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The idiot of the headline is me in the sense that I am not an economist and have never had any formal association with study of the theory and practise of economics, but… I began to understand why what is today called Western capitalism was bound to crash way back in the early 1970′s when I was researching and producing an epic documentary on the everyday reality of global poverty and its implications for all.

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If American election campaign funders who support Israel right or wrong formed a circle and demanded that President Obama stand naked in the middle of it while they sang Hava Nagila (“Let us rejoice”), I am sure he would agree to do so. That thought came into my mind when I read the Reuters’ report, published in Ha’aretz, of what Obama said to a group of fundraisers in the Manhattan home of Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress.

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Israeli democracy fades to black (the black of the blank screen at the end of a film). That was the headline over a recent article by Lawrence Davidson, an American professor of Middle East history. He argued that the suppression of the democratic rights of non-Jews in Israel is coming full circle with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likudniks and settlers now targeting the rights of Jews as well. Events in Cairo provoked this question: Are we witnessing the fading to black of the prospects for freedom and democracy in Egypt, or, is resurgent people power going to make it impossible for the military to maintain its controlling grip? (Presumably there would be limits to how many Egyptian civilians Egyptian soldiers were prepared to kill even if the generals, desperate to protect their wealth and privileges, ordered the suppression by all means of protests and demands for real democracy).

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In advance of the formal burial of the Palestinian Authority’s bid for state recognition at the UN, BBC Radio 4′s flagship Today programme was on the right track. In his introduction to a quite revealing report, presenter John Humphrys said reporter Kevin Connolly had gone to Israel to find out “what hopes there are, if any, for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

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Good examples of the extent to which many (most?) Israeli Jews have been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda and are as a consequence beyond reason and only capable of seeing themselves as the victims instead of what they actually are, the oppressors, were on display in all their naked glory in BBC Radio’s documentary of the week first broadcast last Saturday with the title The State of Israel (meaning, as the programme made clear, the state of things in Israel).

Some 18 months after the end of his posting as the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Tim Franks returned to Israel to discover how much things had changed there. As he noted on the flight in, “There was the same right-leaning government, the same absence of peace talks with the Palestinians. But all around, the region had transformed, as the winds of the Arab Spring had blown.” On the subject of this summer’s social protests in Israel, he said this (my emphasis added): “They appeared to share, with many western countries, the rage at capitalism’s inequalities. And yet Israel’s economy is growing apace – 5% a year – thanks to its world-beating hi-tech sector. And the protestors took a vow of silence on the most contentious issue of all – the conflict with the Palestinians.”

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After UNESCO voted to give the Palestinians full membership, the words of State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland contained a hint that the Obama administration at the highest levels is quite seriously concerned about the possible consequences for America of cutting off funds to the UN agency as required by Zionist lobby driven law enacted by Congress. (The U.S. funds about 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget or roughly $80 million annually; and $60 million was scheduled to be sent this month).

Most of Nuland’s shortish statement would have been sweet music to the Zionist lobby’s ears.

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Last Saturday in his radio address to his own people and over the internet to those around the world who still think he is worth listening to, President Obama said, “This week we had two powerful reminders of how we’ve renewed American leadership in the world.” That made me wonder which of the two d’s should be applied to him – duplicitous or deluded. (I won’t argue with any readers who might say that he is both because being duplicitous eventually makes you delusional. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is best proof of that).

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Russia and China’s veto of the UN Security Council resolution which condemned Syria over its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters and contained a weak reference to the possibility of sanctions against Damascus proved (again) one thing – that despite torrents of soaring rhetoric to the contrary by our leaders, international politics is not about doing what is right and in the best interests of all nations and peoples, it’s only about the short-term, short-sighted, political self-interest of leaders and their governments. And the statement by U.S. ambassador Susan Rice, described by the New York Times as “one of her most bellicose speeches in the Council chamber”, was pure, unadultered hypocrisy at its most naked.

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At the start of the Jewish New Year I have some questions for Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks. They are for him in particular because of what he said in a recorded message of preparation for the New Year, but they are also questions that could and should be asked of rabbis everywhere.

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Barack Obama is still occupying the Oval Office but on policy for Israel-Palestine he is no longer the president. He is presidential candidate Obama, devoted to saying and doing whatever is necessary to secure American Jewish campaign funding and Zionist lobby organized Jewish votes which, in a close election race, could make the difference between him getting or not getting a second term in the White House.

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The main difference between Netanyahu and Abbas was that the Israeli leader could not say “Yes” to President Obama and the Palestinian could not say “No”.

But the drama about to unfold at the UN in New York indicates that Abbas, better late than never, has discovered his testicles – both of them if he goes all the way with his insistence that the Palestinian request for UN recognition as a member state must be presented to the Security Council, but only one of them if he settles for a vote in the General Assembly and spares Obama the embarrassment of having to cast another veto which would fully expose the president’s sick-making hypocrisy (the consequence of his fear of confronting the Zionist lobby) and his administration’s double standards.

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The following is the text of a speech I delivered on 11 September to a conference in Freiburg, Germany, “Palestine, Israel and Germany – the Boundaries of Open Discussion”. The full title of my address was The mainstream media’s complicity in Zionism’s suppression of the truth of history.

I describe the conflict in and over Palestine that became the Zionist – not Jewish! – state of Israel as the cancer at the heart of international affairs; and I believe that without a cure this cancer will consume us all. I also believe that almost nothing is more important than crossing and actually eliminating the boundaries that have prevented, and to a very large extent do still prevent, informed and honest discussion about who must do what and why for justice for the Palestinians and peace for all. And that’s why I was pleased to accept an invitation to address this conference.

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Dear Abe Foxman,

In your lengthy article Decade of Deceit: Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 10 Years Later, you label a number of named writers and commentators including me who say that Israel’s Mossad was or even might have been involved in the 9/11 terror attack as anti-Semitic, and you assert that they are demonizing “the Jews”. You also say: “Anticipating criticism, a number of these anti-Semitic conspiracists now try to immunize themselves against charges of anti-Semitism by making disclaimers up front about not being anti-Semitic. Their own works and record, however, blatantly contradict their innocuous self-characterizations.”

I have to assume that I am one of the “number” in the above quotation because when you introduce at the end of your piece a few sentences of what I have said on the subject of 9/11, you do so with these words:  “After pre-emptively trying to dismiss charges of anti-Semitism, Hart asserts…”

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That was the headline over a recent post by David Hearst for The Guardian’s Comment Is Free space.
It began: “There is an Arabic word you come across a lot when Palestinians talk about their future. Sumud means steadfastness, and it has turned into a strategy: when the imbalance of power is so pronounced, the most important thing to do is to stay put. Staying put against overwhelming odds is regarded as a victory.”

Hearst didn’t offer any substantial explanation of why Palestinian steadfastness is a victory, so I will.

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How much was the mind of Anders Behring Breivik conditioned and warped by Zionist propaganda as peddled with the assistance of Christian fundamentalism by much of the Western mainstream media and many web sites?

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Because Israel’s leaders prefer land to peace and there’s nothing any American president can do about that so long as the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress call the shots on U.S. policy for Israel/Palestine, it’s obvious that the Palestinians have nothing to gain, only more to lose, from politics and diplomacy. So what, really, can they do themselves to press their claim for an acceptable minimum amount of justice? (By definition an acceptable minimum amount of justice requires a complete end to Israel’s 1967 occupation with provision for Jerusalem to be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states).

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When I was reflecting on Netanyahu’s domination and control of the Congress of the United States of America, the first headline that came into my mind for this article was Goodbye to peace. I’ll now explain why I think the headline above is more appropriate.

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a master of Zionist double-speak and deception, is about to undertake the most important assignment of his life. Because of its continuing occupation and oppression of the Palestinians (not to mention on-going property and land grabs), Israel is becoming a pariah state so far as a growing number of the citizens of nations are concerned. The main purpose of Netanyahu’s forthcoming trip to America is to .launch a public relations campaign to rebrand Israel in the hope of stopping the rot of its growing isolation.

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The following is the recording of a panel event that I took part in with Gilad Atzmon, Karl Sabbagh and Sameh A.Habeeb, discussing Zionism, Jewishness and Israel.

Panel event- ‘Zionizm, Jewishness and Israel’ from Tali Atzmon on Vimeo.

(Full transcript at RT.com)

As I explained on a lecture tour of South Africa (Goldstone Land) from which I have just returned, the answer is in what happened behind closed doors at the Security Council in New York in the weeks and months following the 1967 war. But complete understanding requires knowledge of the fact that it was a war of Israeli aggression and not, as Zionism’s spin doctors continue to assert, self-defense.

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In the early days of the demonstrations of people power on Arab streets it could have been said (some did say) that they were a huge setback for all the various forces of violent Islamic extremism. This because the demonstrations, in Egypt especially, seemed to be sending a clear signal – that change could be brought about by peaceful means on a non-sectarian basis. But…

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Definition: Pariah – a social outcast (Chambers Dictionary)

One eminent Israeli who apparently thinks the answer could be yes is Ilan Baruch, a veteran diplomat who resigned ahead of his retirement because, he said, he could no longer represent his government’s “wrong” policy. He also ridiculed Zionism’s assertion that global anti-Israeli sentiments generated by occupation are a manifestation of anti-Semitism.

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Never before has an American President’s fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress been so exposed as it was by Obama’s decision to veto the Security Council resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank and demanding that Israel “immediately and completely cease” all such activities. In a different America – an informed America – some might think, I do, that Obama should be impeached. The charge? TREASON.

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For decades, and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, American-led Western policy has been to prefer Arab dictatorship (authoritarianism in various forms) to Arab democracy. This preference was determined by two main assessments.

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For many years I believed that Israel’s leaders have no equals in the business of saying one thing and doing another. But Mubarak has proved me wrong. He went on television to tell Egyptians that he would be staying on for some months because only he could restore stability and set the stage for it to continue after he stepped down. Hours later his thugs were leading a violent attack on the peaceful, pro-democracy protesters in Cairo’s Tahir square.

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If more and more Arabs breach the wall of fear that has prevented them for decades from demanding their rights, expressing their rage at the corruption and repression of their governments and at regime impotence in the face of Israel’s arrogance of power, there’s one question above all others America’s policy makers will have to ask themselves. Who do we need most if America’s own real interests are to be best protected – the Arabs or Israel? And that, of course, begs the mother and father of all questions for them: Is Israel our most valuable ally in the region or our biggest liability?

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The most sickening (I mean truly vomit inducing) thing about the Al Jazeera revelations, the so-called Palestine Papers, is not what they confirm about the quisling status of the impotent and corrupt Palestine Authority. Nor is it what they confirm about the Israeli leadership’s complete lack of interest in peace on terms other than those which require the Palestinians to surrender – to abandon their struggle for even an acceptable minimum amount of justice. What then is the most sickening thing?

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Despite strong U.S. opposition, a proposed resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank did make it to the UN Security Council. It was not put to a vote and no vote is expected for some time, if ever, because of the probability as things stand of an American veto. But given growing global support for the resolution, there is a case for wondering if President Obama can remain Zionist-like in his own implicit defiance of international law on Israel’s behalf.

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It’s not impossible that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was right when he described the tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 as “an American and Israeli tool”. Though I myself see Israel’s military and political leaders as those with most to gain – I mean thinking they have most to gain – from a successful attempt to pin the blame on Hezbollah.

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Short answer: Great effort is made to hunt down and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals, no effort is made to bring Zionist war criminals to justice.

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The headline is not meant to imply that I think he will. As things are he can’t because of the stranglehold on American policy for Israel/Palestine of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, the mainstream media and many institutions of state including the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. My purpose is only to offer an answer to this question: What could happen if President Obama was able to put America’s own real interests first?

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Question: Why is it that in this Christian season of “Peace on Earth and good will to all men (and women)” the name of Israel’s Soviet-born foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, described by some as Israel’s “Hitler in-the-making”, should enter my mind? … continue reading

After his appointment as Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, California’s representative Howard Berman told The Forward, “Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist.” This is the man, one of the Zionist lobby’s most influential stooges in Congress, who introduced House Resolution 1734 which gives President Obama his new orders.
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President Obama ought to have trouble sleeping at night knowing that by allowing Israel to continue its illegal settlement activity on the occupied West Bank he has made himself, and his country, openly complicit in the Zionist state’s defiance of international law. In a different America that ought to be enough to have any president removed from office.

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Those of us who are associated with the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and who call for justice for the Palestinians, now have reason to say “Thank you” to … continue reading

Some commentators, bloggers and other writers, were quick to jump to the conclusion that the avalanche of documents being released by WikiLeaks is part and parcel of an Israeli/Mossad deception strategy. One implication being that WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange is, knowingly or not, manipulated by Zionism.
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The Wikileaks revelation that some Persian Gulf Arab leaders wanted (and still want?) America to attack Iran is confirmation of what some of us thought we knew – that Arab leaders are not merely impotent but as dangerously deluded as their Israeli counterparts.
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That was the headline over a story – wonderful news, I say, if it’s true – in Israel’s English language newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, on 25 November. On behalf of Zionism’s colonial project in Palestine, the writer, Isi Leibler, was verbally crucifying one of Britain’s most influential Jewish leaders for daring to go public with his criticism of Netanyahu and saying, among other things, that Israel’s policies and actions were harming the best interests of British Jews, and by implication non-Israeli Jews everywhere.

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Sarah Palin (or her publisher) chose a title for her latest book with three “F” words -America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and the Flag. But surely there’s something missing. Another “F” word. One with four letters. What could it be? (My answer in a moment).

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When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America recently, he was relaxed, charming and at his deluded best. For Jewish audiences which don’t want to know the truth of history, there’s nobody who can deliver Zionism’s propaganda lines and lies more effectively than him. (Though he didn’t say so, he was obviously delighted that President Obama had taken a hammering in the mid-term elections).

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On the face of it the package of “incentives” Secretary of State Clinton offered Prime Minister Netanyahu to persuade him to buy and sell to his coalition government a one-time-only freeze of 90 days on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank could be summed up with one “c” word – criminal.

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The following is the text of an in-depth interview Koroush Ziabari conducted with me.

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?

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There is a debate in Israel about whether the Zionist state is on the slippery slope to fascism or is already fascist. As far as I am aware the mainstream Western media has not drawn any attention to this.

It was Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics, who, along with 27 other most influential Jews, first warned of the danger of the rise of fascism in Israel. In a letter to the Editor of The New York Times published on 4 December 1948, when Menachem Begin was soliciting support in America, they said this:

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In Mumbai President Obama was asked by an Indian student for his “take or opinion on jihad”. He began his answer with the observation that “the phrase jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations.” In its report of the discussion, The New York Times noted that Obama “carefully avoided saying that he was opposed to jihad”. (I ask – How could he be opposed if he is aware of its two real and true meanings in Islam? The Greater jihad is the inner struggle for self-improvement to become a good Muslim. The Lesser jihad is struggle against oppression – oppression as in Israel’s occupation and treatment of the Palestinians, for example).

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In 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.

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The conversation begins at around 2 minutes into the recording.
The Ugly Truth

Better late than never, a very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, found the right way to challenge Israel and the U.S. As reported by AFP on 13 October, he said, “We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise.”

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On 25 September I wrote a piece headlined Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace. Since then I’ve seen no need for me to contribute to the debate about the farce that President Obama’s push for peace is and was always going to be. But the Arab League’s decision to give Obama a one-month deadline to rescue the direct talks between Abbas and his quisling administration and Netanyahu and his deluded coalition government demands a comment or two.

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On marks out of ten for his speech to the UN on the subject of ending the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I’d give President Obama minus five.

Earlier this month (on 4 September) I wrote a piece with the headline Obama has signalled his coming complete surrender to Zionism and its lobby. That surrender, it seems to me, is now effectively a fait accompli.

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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. The question this article addresses is: Will future historians conclude that the Palestinian diaspora betrayed its occupied and oppressed brothers and sisters?

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The suggestion that he should was made by Thomas L. Friedman in his column for the New York Times on 7 September. My first response was to say to myself, “That proves Friedman doesn’t understand the complexities of the conflict and is at least a little bit bonkers.”

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He did it with seven words. “Ultimately the U.S. cannot impose a solution.”

He was speaking at the White House the day before the start of the new round of direct talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, after he had met with them and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II. (In my last post I anticipated Obama saying at the point of his complete surrender that “America can’t want peace more than the parties.” He also said that – ahead of schedule!)

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I never thought a day could come when I would agree with anything stated by Moshe Arens (three times an Israeli minister of defense, a one-time foreign minister, a former ambassador to the U.S. and, in my opinion, Zionism’s in-Israel equivalent of Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle in America). But the day came.

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Short answer. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad did NOT call for Israeli Jews to be annihilated. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas party, HAS called, more than once, for the Palestinians (and, in fact, all Arabs) to be exterminated.

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I have written and often say that very many if not most Jews do not want to know the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. (An essential element of the truth being that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing).

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Defenders of Israel right or wrong continue to assert that the absence of peace is all the fault of the Palestinians.

In one sense they are right. When the Palestine file was closed by Israel’s victory (ethnic cleansing and all) on the battlefield in 1948, the Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. That was according to the script written by Zionism and effectively endorsed by all the major powers and, behind closed doors, the regimes of a divided and impotent Arab order. … continue reading

Ronen Bergman, a senior military and political analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, recently wrote what I consider to be one of the most important articles for decades on the subject of the mindset of the Zionist state’s military and political leaders. It was reproduced in the Wall Street Journal under the headline Siege Fatigue and the Flotilla Mistake.

Getting to the main thrust of his analysis, Bergman wrote this (my emphasis added):
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The following is my keynote address to the annual re-union dinner of the Liberty Veterans’ Association – Long Island, 12 June 2010.

I want to begin by saying that though I covered wars wherever they were taking place on Planet Earth in my television reporting days – it was in Vietnam as a very young correspondent that I first started to ask myself questions about why things are as they are in the world – I am an Englishman and one who didn’t serve in his country’s armed forces. (Not because I was a draft dodger. Conscription had ended). So it is both an honour and a privilege for me to be with you this evening. And please believe me, I really mean it. I’m not a politician just saying it.
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President-elect Obama stayed silent when, back in December of 2008 and January of 2009, Israel declared war on the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip prison camp. (In my view that was a demonstration of naked Israeli state terrorism). As I write from America, with the drama and implications of Israel’s murderous attack on the Gaza Flotilla still being played out, I find myself wondering if President Obama will have the balls to say to Israel, “Enough is enough”.

He would not dare to say that in those words, but he could break with precedence by refusing to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel.

Will he do so?

We shall see.

If he does authorize a veto, it will be time for even those of us who invested some good faith in him to conclude that he is the prisoner of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress and, more to the point, a prisoner with no hope of escape.

The following is the text of my address to the Annual Nakba Commemoration Dinner, Dearborn, on 15 May 2010. (Video will be posted as soon as possible.)

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Click play to hear Ray Hanania’s interview with me:

[mp3 url="/wp-content/audio/rayhania_20100504.mp3"/]

This article is my contribution to a series on the same theme by a number of writers.

For readers who may not be intimately familiar with English terminology, an oxymoron is a figure of speech by which contradictory terms are combined to form an expressive phrase or epithet such as cruel kindness and falsely true. (It’s derived from the Greek word oxymoros meaning pointedly foolish).

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Am I alone in thinking that on a daily basis President Obama is beginning to sound more and more like George “Dubya” Bush when he was talking tough about protecting Americans at home by fighting wars abroad?

That thought first came into my mind as I watched and listened to Obama addressing American troops at Bagram Air Force base on his recent surprise visit to Afghanistan. His purpose was to re-affirm America’s commitment to destroying al-Qaida and its Taliban and other allies.

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President Obama’s apparent desire to move forcefully against Iran with new sanctions within weeks, not months, makes me wonder if he is calculating that he will be in a better position to put some real pressure on Israel, and possibly bring about regime change there, if he can successfully bully Iran into playing the game his way. If that is what Obama is thinking, he could be setting himself up (or is being set up?) for another humiliation.

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In an editorial on 26 March The New York Times declared that it is “even more sceptical now” of Netanyahu’s professed commitment to peacemaking and a two-state solution. A sign that Zionism’s freedom to muzzle the mainstream American media is no longer without limit? Perhaps.

But refreshing though this NYT editorial stance was – broadly pro Obama and anti Netanyahu – it missed, by default or design, a major point; but we’ll come to that in a moment.

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That U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had the courage to tell AIPAC’s conference that Israel’s continued construction of Jewish housing on occupied territory is undermining both the prospect for peace and America’s credibility and own best interests was good news. The bad news is that this and other Obama administration expressions of concern are 42 years too late.

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At the opening of AIPAC’s annual foreign policy conference its new president, Lee Rosenberg, was not a happy man. As he put it, “In recent days we have witnessed something (the Obama administration’s initial public anger with Netanyahu and his government) very unfortunate.”

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(This is an article I contributed to a series titled Zionism Unmasked.)

There are two definitions of anti-Semitism in its Jewish context. One was born in real history and represents a truth. The other is part and parcel of Zionist mythology and was invented for the purpose of blackmailing non-Jewish Europeans and North Americans into refraining from criticising Israel or, to be more precise, staying silent when its leaders resort to state terrorism and demonstrate in many ways their absolute contempt for international law.

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Amazing! While in Israel, an American vice president explicitly condemns an Israeli decision to build yet more homes, 1,600 apartments, in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Joe Biden said. “It’s the kind of step that undermines the trust we need”. Yes, but…

They were only words. And they call to mind a comment made by Uri Avnery, the grandfather of the Israeli peace movement, in a piece he wrote for Tikkun on 23 September 2009, after President Obama’s call for a complete freeze had been rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

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Gideon Levy writes for Ha’aretz, the newspaper than enables some Israelis, sadly a minority, to cling on to their sanity. I have described him in the past as the conscience of Israeli journalism. But he is far more than that. He is the conscience of all Israeli Jews. Today, 7 March 2010, he writes about the Israeli peace camp, which in terms of the headline over his article “Never was and never will be.“

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There could not be a more graphic illustration of the double-standard that drives Western foreign policy and has prevented a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict than Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s explanation to the Chilcot Inquiry on why he, when he was Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and wrote the cheques for it, backed the war on Iraq.

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The developing debate about Israel’s future offers two scenarios but there is a third which, apparently, should not be discussed in the open, in public. So let’s do just that.

Among the most recent contributors to what I’ll call the two-scenario debate was no less a figure than Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister. In a speech to the annual national security conference in Herzliya, and then again in the U.S., he warned that if Israel did not make peace with the Palestinians, it would become an “apartheid” state.

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If you were a gambling man down to your last million dollars, you could safely bet the lot on the fact that Israel will not be punished for the Mossad’s murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

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Dear Roger,

Over the past few months I have saluted your courage in seeking to open the eyes of New York Times’ readers to some of the differences between Zionist propaganda and what the facts on the ground in Israel/Palestine are telling us.

Your latest column, Hard Mideast Truths, published on 12 February and which I tweeted, was, I think, your most explicit to date. (I imagine you got a bucket load of organised hate mail for it).

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This article was written as one in a series with other authors under the title ZIONISM UNMASKED. I will be tweeting the contributions of others in due course.

Most Jews of the world (and probably many Gentiles) believe that Zionism is the return of Jews to the land promised to them by God. At the risk of offending some readers of all faiths for saying so, I must confess, and do so cheerfully, that I don’t buy this concept because the Gentile me does not believe in the God of organized, institutional religions. So, I say to myself, no God, no promise to Jews (or anybody else). In my perception of the scheme of things, God is the potential for good inside each and every one of us. God so defined is a prisoner within each of us and our prime task is to liberate this prisoner. But let’s put that to one side.

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At a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida on 28 January, President Obama explained what in his view had to happen if there is to be a two-state solution which would see Israel and the Palestinians living side by side in peace and security. He said, “Both sides are going to have to make concessions“.

My own view is that Israel’s still on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank has destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution on any basis the Palestinians could accept. But for the sake of discussion I’ll pretend that is not necessarily so.

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With thanks to ITN and the BBC’s Gavin Esler, I simply can’t resist giving this little story wider circulation. It came to me in ITN’s 1955 Club Newsletter. (I receive it monthly as a member of the club).

The story as told by Gavin Esler and reported by the newsletter:

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Putting Tony Blair on trial would be much too cruel. The man is ill, delusional, quite possibly to the point of madness. What he needs most of all is psychiatric help. Any doubts I might have had about that diagnosis were removed by his six-hour presentation to the Chilcot Inquiry of his reasons for joining the neo-conned “Dubya” Bush in the war on Iraq.

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There is no doubt it. More and more people all over the world, and probably many of their governments behind closed doors, are beginning to see the Zionist state of Israel for what it really is – not only the obstacle to peace but a monster apparently beyond control; and they, more and more so-called ordinary folk everywhere, are beginning to turn against it.

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In their refusal to ask the question of why, really, Muslims are being radicalized, President Obama and Prime Minister Brown are no different from their immediate predecessors.

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With the dawn of a New Year is there any reason to hope that it will see real progress on ending the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel and stopping the countdown to catastrophe for all?

I can see only one reason. It’s in the fact that the Zionist state has become its own worst enemy. (Some will say thank goodness for that because with the Arab regimes as enemies, Israel doesn’t need friends!)

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On the first anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip – in my view it was a demonstration of Israeli state terrorism at its most naked – it’s not enough to say that the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in Israel’s on-going collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians, 53% of whom are children.

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The short answer is a failure of leadership – by presidents and prime ministers and their governments, those of the major powers most of all.

In The Independent on 21 December, Johann Hari offered this observation:

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I had to struggle with myself to decide which of two headlines was most appropriate for this article – the one above or “The hard core of lunatics are pulling up the drawbridge”.

A Jewish friend in Canada drew my attention to an article in the Jewish Ledger, an independent weekly newspaper in Westport, Connecticut. The headline over it is “Saving Israel” Expert says American Jews key to Israel’s survival. I have rarely read such dangerous nonsense. It’s the voice of Zionism, deluded as ever, but with more than a hint of panic.

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Writing in The Wall Street Journal (which has a preference for Israeli propaganda), Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said that advancing a peace process now depends not on Netanyahu and his government or President Obama but the Palestinians.

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I have been writing about what must happen in America if there is to be more than a snowball’s chance in hell of peace on the basis of an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians. (The main point I’ve been making is that unless and until enough Americans are made aware of the truth of history, no American president will have the space to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress). In this article, with thanks to an analysis by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, I’m looking at what must happen in Israel if the countdown to catastrophe is to be stopped.

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“Mr. President, will you take a call from Prime Minister Netanyahu in five minutes? He says it’s urgent, very urgent.”

“Rahm, I can tell from the tone of your voice that you’re not asking me a question. You’re giving me an order.”

Rahm Emanuel smiled.

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described his offer to temporarily restrict construction of all-new Jewish settlements on the West Bank excluding Arab East Jerusalem as a “far-reaching and painful step”, which was part of a policy he hoped would give a new impetus to peace talks.

Netanyahu is not stupid. He knows that some of us know he is not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. So what then is his real game plan of the moment? Simple. He is seeking to make peace with the Obama administration. And its response suggests that with the help of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress he’s got that matter firmly under control.

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It’s not often that stories about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict make me laugh but one by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East editor, did. Because he is the corporation’s correspondent supporters of Israel right or wrong most love to hate – from time to time they pressure the BBC to fire him – I imagine he enjoyed writing it.

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I’m quite strongly inclined to the view that the answer is “No”, but the question is still worth asking. It was triggered in my mind by a phrase in the introduction to the lead story of the BBC’s World Service (Radio) news bulletins late on 17 November and early the following morning. The story was the Obama’s administration’s “dismay” at Israel’s decision to approve 900 new homes in occupied Arab East Jerusalem “in defiance of world opinion“. The words emphasized were those of a BBC scriptwriter, not a spokesman for the Obama administration.

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There is a case for saying that those leaders of the discredited PNA (Palestine National Authority) who are proposing to unilaterally declare an independent state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and seek to get UN Security Council backing for it are being clever.

What they would be doing in effect is asking the Security Council not only to re-affirm its commitment to Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 but, far more important, to confront that resolution’s fatal flaw on the matter of land for peace.

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When I wrote and posted Part 1 of this article, I was, of course, aware that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of President Obama speaking truth to the power of Jewish America as it was represented at the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America. The words I put into his mouth could only have been spoken by him if he was going to be true to his statement to Netanyahu and Abbas – “We must all take risks for peace”.

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I am one of the many who is quietly outraged by the Western media’s so-called balancing act in its reporting of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip (state terrorism in my view) and the Goldstone Report. So I was delighted by a letter in today’s Guardian from one Terry Greenberg in North Vancouver. The following is the text of it.

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As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives voted, on Tuesday 3 November, by 344 votes to 36, to urge the Obama administration to oppose endorsement of the Goldstone Report. But for those who are interested in truth and justice, not to mention democracy, the highlight of what passed for debate was the two-minute contribution of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic Party’s representative for Ohio’s 10^th district (and a starter candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2004 an 2008).

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Informed and honest analysis suggests that no American president will ever be able to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress on matters to do with Israel/Palestine unless and until a majority of Jewish Americans, in order to protect their own best interests and those of all their fellow Americans, indicate that they wish him to do so, or that they will not object if he tries.

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On Monday 12 October, Prime Minister Netanyahu opened the Knesset’s winter session by blasting the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes and vowing that he would never allow Israelis be tried for them. But that was not his main message. It was an appeal, delivered I thought with a measure of desperation, to the “Palestinian leadership”, presumably the leadership of “President” Abbas and his Fatah cronies, leaders who are regarded by very many if not most Palestinians as American-and-Israeli stooges at best and traitors at worst.

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I don’t go all the way with the cynicism of the American (economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo) who expressed surprise that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “after killing only so few people”; and I really do hope that the current occupant of the White House will be allowed to deliver on the rhetorical commitments that won him the prize. My fear is that events will invite the conclusion that the Nobel Committee had a premature ejaculation and that there never was a real prospect of the egg of hope being fertilized for justice and peace in the Middle East.

And that grim thought provokes an idea.

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President Obama declared, “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” That’s not a true statement. It’s missing five words. The truth required him to say all nations “with the exception of Israel.”

For his part, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown took the anti-Iran rhetoric in the direction of hysteria. Following the announcement, by Iran, of the existence of a previously undeclared nuclear facility on a military base outside the holy city of Qom, Brown declared, “The level of deception by the government of Iran will shock and anger the whole international community and will harden our resolve.”

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The following are the global details of PressTV’s first full transmission of the heated debate I recorded in London on 12 June.

Dates and Times

• 20/09/2009 19:02
• 21/09/2009 02.02
• 21/09/2009 14.02

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Dear President Carter,

Back in 1987 my wife and I had the pleasure and privilege of being invited to sit and talk with you and Rosalynn at The Carter Center. Since then, and with increasing concern, even alarm, you’ve been doing what American Presidents can’t do in office – telling the truth (well, quite a lot of it) about why a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained and, I fear, seems set to remain, beyond the reach of politics and diplomacy.

I say set to remain because while I believe that President Obama is a good man who means well, I think he will not be allowed to deliver. On matters to do with Israel, the Zionist lobby’s grip on your pork-barrel Congress is too strong for him to break. (You might not wish to say so in public, but I imagine you would … continue reading

The headline above and text below is by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA coutner-terrosim chief with 27 years service. This, his latest article, is on the blog Wake Up Americans! Your Government is Hijacked by Zionism. Its stated purpose is “to chart the influence of the powerful Israeli Lobby in American domestic and foreign policy, public life and the election process, and American military interventions overseas since the end of World War II.”

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Zionism’s in-Israel political and military hawks, and their neo-con associates in America, have no equals in the business of making outrageous and self-righteous statements. But few come close to matching the recent utterance of Israel’s education minister, Gideon Sa’ar. “The creation of the State of Israel cannot be referred to as a tragedy.”

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A ridiculous notion some and perhaps many will say. How dare I ask such a question? It was provoked in my mind by an interview with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in The Times (of London) and remarks attributed to him in a BBC World Service news report (broadcast only once so far as I am aware).

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In early June 2009, I wrote a piece with the headline The Gentile Alan Hart and Jews (very many of them), THE PROBLEM – IS IT ME OR THEM?.

It started out as a sort of memorandum to myself. Subsequently I e-mailed the text to a number of allies in common cause, people of all faiths and none. This article – my call for Jews in big numbers not small ones to end their silence on the matter of Zionism’s crimes – is now being quite widely circulated by activist networks. One new Jewish ally and friend who e-mailed me from America said, “It seems that you’ve struck a chord.”

So I’ve decided to upload my original article together with the text of Dorothy’s Zeller’s answer on 23 August to the question posed by Mondoweiss’s Phil Weiss – Why is it essential for Jews to speak out, as Jews, on Israel?

Dear Readers, Followers and Supporters,

Two and half weeks from now, the cover of Volume 3 of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews must be finalized for cataloging and publication next Spring.

I am excited about that, but I am wondering if there is a more suitable cover image than this one:

So, to see if the online community of those who are interested in the truth of history can suggest anything better, I’ve decided to hold a little competition.

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In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s bloody confrontation with the al-Qaeda inspired Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Companions of God), imagine a headline something like this: Israeli PM Netanyahu thanks Hamas for taking on Islamic fanatics.

Of course that is pure fantasy.

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William Bell Jr posted me the following message and I thought it was worth quoting in full:

Acclaimed reporter and former Vietnam correspondent, Alan Hart, is the author of “Zionism The Real Enemy of the Jews, The False Messiah, Volume One. In the prologue titled “Waiting for the Apocalypse, p. 26, he cites staff writer Jane Lampman’s report in (Monitorworld, March 6-12, 2004).

Her report headlined: THE END OF THE WORLD: THE DEBATE HEATS UP. She wrote that “the interest in end-times prophecy has spread beyond their circles and is not only shaping people’s lives, but even influencing United States foreign policy. She referred to the minority of fundamentalist American Christians.

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ANTI-SEMITISM RISING – WHY? was recorded by PressTV for transmission as two programmes, each having two parts. (When recording there’s a studio break for live news between each part).

Due to what was described as “human error” at PressTV HQ in Tehran (they’ve got a lot on their minds!), only the first half of the first of the two programmes was initially transmitted (what you see below is that part, which somehow found its way to YouTube.). The complete package is being rescheduled and when I am notified of transmission dates and times, I will let you know through a new post and through my Twitter feed etc.

The first part gives a hint of why I’ve come to the conclusion that informed and honest debate with Zionism is impossible.

How does an eminent Israeli campaigner for peace with justice for the Palestinians respond to an old friend and ally who renounces Zionism?

Here is the response of Uri Avnery, Israel’s most celebrated dove. … continue reading

This article was written and first posted more than a year ago, before Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip (an act of state terrorism by another name). With Fatah about to meet and the discredited PNA still in being, this article is, I suggest, worth a second reading (or a first for new visitors to this site). In my view, the fact that President Obama has become positively engaged does not change the essence of the analysis below.

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On 1 July the BBC’s Newsnight programme lent itself to a Zionist attempt to smear and discredit PressTV. From Zionism’s point of view this had to be done because, as its growing worldwide audience knows, PressTV is the only television channel in the world on which it is possible to challenge, seriously and in documented depth and detail, Zionism’s version of history. As I have demonstrated in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, and in programmes I have made for PressTV, Zionism’s version of history is more than mythology. It’s a pack of propaganda lies.

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The following is the text of a presentation I made at the London Muslim Centre last night:

The contestants in the fight of the headline I gave to the title of this talk can best be described as President “Yes, We Can” and Prime Minister “No, We Won’t.”

I want to start with a positive observation about Obama.

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A question… Who said the following?

“We must kill all terrorist leaders, starting with Mahmoud Abbas, and all others.” … continue reading

I received with others the following very amusing short story from lawyer Ed Corrigan, a Canadian campaigner for justice and peace in the Middle East. He received it from Pat, a friend of his. I imagine it will appeal rather more to the ladies than the men (most men) … continue reading

On the third anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death (was he the first victim of Israeli biological warfare?) I recalled my favourite story about him.

Shortly after the publication in 1984 of the first edition of my book Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?, I was informed by one of his PLO leadership colleagues that something I had written had made him very, very angry. (Nobody liked being on the receiving end of Arafat’s terrible temper. It was the equivalent of a verbal nuclear strike, a weapon he unleashed to intimidate colleagues when he could not persuade them to see things his way by reasoned argument).

I asked the colleague to tell me what it was I had written that had made Arafat angry. He said, “I think you should hear it from the chairman himself … continue reading

A friend of mine has just received the following short report from the Atfulna School for Deaf Children in Gaza.

In this “Enemy Entity” where we live under restrictions of a ridiculous embargo, I would not be surprised that the coming months will find us fighting over a pen or a sheet of paper … continue reading

A most powerful and moving video (running time under nine minutes) has come to my attention. The gentleman who drew it to my attention wrote, “Watch this video – if you can bear it.” It made me cry tears of rage.

It can be found on

http://www.tv.social.org.il/medini/yosi-ertas-19-5-07.htm

At about 3.30pm Tel Aviv time on Sunday 4 June 1967, a young British television reporter handed the Israeli military censor the text of a story he had written and, if it was cleared, was going to record for broadcasting by ITN in its main evening news bulletin.

ITN’s Sunday evening bulletins were less than eight minutes in total length so the story had to be very short. In Londonforeign editor Hans Verhoven had agreed that the reporter could have 40 seconds. At three words per second that was a total of 120 words including the sign-off.

The reporter’s intro was the following: “For some reasons I can report, for others I cannot, I think the war is going to start tomorrow morning.” And he signed off: “Alan Hart, ITN, Tel Aviv, on the eve of war.”

I didn’t think the military censor would allow me to say “Israel is going to war tomorrow morning,” so I didn’t put it quite like that; but since I was in Israel that was obviously my meaning.

I was going out on a long limb with my (actually well informed) speculation because … continue reading

On Tuesday evening 1 May, a BBC correspondent noted in passing that the Bush administration believes that “Iran is meddling in Iraq”. (My emphasis added).

I wonder what single word best describes what the Bush administration is doing in Iraq…..?

For those who believe or profess to believe that a genuine two-state solution to the Palestine problem is still an option, the following summary report from the Alternative Information Center ought to be required reading … continue reading

As a former ITN and BBC Panorama correspondent, I am often asked how I explain the Western mainstream media’s preference for Zionist mythology as opposed to the truth of history (as it relates to the making and sustaining of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict). I address this question, quite explicitly … continue reading

The following press release was recently sent to me:

With formation of the Palestinian National unity government, the 19^thArab summit have agreed that the Arab Peace Initiative is the key towards a dialogue with Israel in order to reach a comprehensive Peace agreement and to establish the independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. … continue reading

The following op-ed article by Amanda Gelender was recently sent to me:

The Stanford Daily – 2 Apr 2007

I attribute my deep sense of social justice to my Jewish upbringing. Active in my congregation as a child, I have fond memories of attending Jewish summer camp, Shabbat services and Purim carnivals … continue reading

I am posting this after clicking on to publish the hate mail I received over the last few days after I dared to speculate about who might have been, repeat might have been, responsible for Alan Johnston’s “disappearance” and, if he is dead, who killed him.

Many (which means not all) of the comments were abusive and vile, indicating (this is not news) that some defenders of the Zionist state of Israel right or wronghave very sick minds … continue reading