Alan Hart

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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Dear President Obama,

A photo op with Netanyahu and Abbas is no disguise for the fact that on the matter of getting a real peace process going in the Middle East, “Yes, we can” has become “No, we can’t”. And there’s no mystery about why. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rejection of your call for a complete settlement freeze is merely a symptom of the underlying problem. It is that Zionism – a colonial enterprise pure and simple – is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.

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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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