Alan Hart

With Israel seriously considering how best to destroy Hamas (and Hizbollah and possibly Iran) and bolster the stooge leadership of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian friends have been asking me what I think the Palestinians could and should now do to improve their prospects for obtaining an acceptable amount of justice.

I thought my answer would not go down well with some of them but, in fact, it went down very well with all of them (including, for example, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, the former Bishop of Jerusalem).

My view is that the Palestinians would be well advised to … continue reading

The following is a shortened version of my presentation to the United Nations Youth & Students Association at LeicesterUniversityon 11 February 2007. The subject for debate was “The UN in the world today – relevant or relic?”

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No, dear reader, I’m not about to state or imply that the President of the United States of America dropped his trousers in public or anything like that. What he exposed during the course of an interview with Israeli Channel 2 was far more revealing and shocking than that.

To give some necessary context to what President Bush said to his Israeli Channel 2 interviewer (an apparently very nervous lady), I want to quote the words of a very dear Jewish friend of the Gentile me. He’s a survivor of the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust and one of the most passionate and courageous critics of the Zionist state of Israel and its crimes.

His name is Dr. Hajo Meyer. He was born in Germany, served in the Jewish underground and, when he was captured by the S.S., was transported to Aushchwitz. After that death camp was liberated, he pursued a very successful business career, becoming the managing director of … continue reading

Dear President Bush,

This is to assist your reflections on your return from the Middle East. I am writing in the belief that you do want to stop the countdown to Armageddon but don’t have the courage to do what is necessary.

An end to the conflict in and over Palestine on the basis of a viable two-state solution was possible so far as the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere were concerned from the end of1979, more than a quarter of a century ago. It follows, again so far as the vast majority of Palestinians and other Arabs and most Muslims everywhere are concerned, that, before you leave office, you could make for yourself a place in history as the greatest of all peacemakers. But only if you are prepared to use the leverage you have to require Israel to end its occupation of allthe Arab land it grabbed in 1967. The following is some advice about why you should and how you could use the leverage you have. … continue reading

Who said the following: When you’re the leader “you need, um, to be able to separate yourself (pause) somewhat from the magnitude of the consequences of the decisions you are taking?”?

Was it Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Menachem Begin, Pol Pot or possibly George “Dubya” Bush?

Answer, none of the above.

Just occasionally terrestrial television comes up with a documentary that provides real and (to my way of thinking) terrifying insight into the mindest of leaders. One such documentary, actually a series of three, The Blair Years, has just ended on BBC Television.

The third and last programme, which like all three was constructed on an in-depth conversation between the former prime minister and Sunday Timescolumnist David (am I really a Zionist?) Aaronovitch, was titled Blair In Power.

Throughout the programme, as in power, Blair insisted that he did what he did because he truly and totally believed it was “the right thing to do.” That, said Sir Ming Campbell, the former Liberal Democratic Party leader, was “a very frustrating phrase”. Why? “Because if I say to you (David Aaronovitch) that it’s ‘the right thing to do,’ there’s no forensic skill you can exercise that can disturb that. It’s a phrase of last resort, impervious to argument.”

In discourse analysis it’s known as the false dilemma. You can’t argue with somebody, particularly a leader, who insists that he was doing what was right because, implicity, you invite yourself to be seen as arguing for … continue reading