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17 November 2010 By Kourosh Ziabari
Alan Hart is an indispensable name in
journalism. Unquestionably, he has been one of the
most influential British journalists with an expertise
in the Middle East affairs. A former BBC Panorama
presenter, Hart was a close friend of Israeli Prime
Minister Golda Meir and Palestinian President Yasser
Arafat. During his fruitful career, Hart interviewed
several prominent leaders including Saudi Arabia's
King Faisal, Jordan's King Hussein and Egyptian
Presidents Nasser and Sadat.
He was a media correspondent for the
Independent Television Network and has covered the
Vietnam War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well.
He is a vocal critic of Israel and its
expansionistic policies and has repeatedly reprimanded
the Arab leaders for their implicit complicity with
Israel in its suppression of the Palestinian nation.
Alan Hart joined me in an exclusive,
in-depth interview to explore the prospect of
Israel-Palestinian conflict, the roots of Zionist
lobby's influence over the U.S. Congress, the 9/11
conspiracy theories and the possibility of a
U.S.-directed military strike against Iran.
Kourosh Ziabari: 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? Alan
Hart: Let's start with Reality Number One. There are
two sets of rules for the behavior of nations, one for
all the countries of the world minus Israel, the other
exclusively for Israel. This double-standard is the
mother and father of Arab and other Muslim hurt,
humiliation and anger. Put another way, this
double-standard is the best recruiting sergeant for
violent Islamic fundamentalism. In
the story of the conflict in and over Palestine that
became Israel as I tell it fully documented in my
latest book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews,
the moment when the major powers created the
double-standard can be more or less pinpointed. In the
immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, and because it
was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense, the
major powers, through the UN Security Council, should
have said to Israel something like the following:
"You are not to build any settlements
on newly occupied Arab land. If you do, you'll be
demonstrating your contempt for international law. In
this event the international community will declare
Israel to be an outlaw state and subject it to
sanctions." If
something like that riot act had been read to Israel,
there probably would have been peace many, many years
ago. For background let me briefly explain why. The
pragmatic Arafat was reluctantly reconciled to the
reality of Israel's existence inside its pre-1967
borders as far back as 1969. In his gun and olive
branch address to the UN General Assembly on 13
November 1974 he said so by obvious implication.
Thereafter he put his credibility with his leadership
colleagues and his people, and his life, on the line
to get a mandate for unthinkable compromise with
Israel. He got the mandate at the end of 1979 when the
Palestine National Council, then the highest
decision-making body on the Palestinian side, voted by
296 votes to 4 to endorse his two-state policy - a
solution which any rational Israeli government and
people would have accepted with relief. What Arafat
needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. He
eventually got a probable one, Yitzhak Rabin, but he
was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly
what he was doing - killing the peace process. The
more it became clear that Israel's leaders were not
interested in a genuine two-state solution for which
Arafat had prepared the ground on his side, the more
his credibility with his own people suffered.
Eisenhower was the first and the last American
president to contain Zionism. After Israel had
secretly colluded with France and Britain in the 1956
invasion of Eygpt to overthrow Nasser and take back
the Suez Canal which he had nationalized, Israel's
leaders tried to insist on conditions for Israel's
withdrawal from the Sinai. Eisenhower confronted them
by going over the heads of Congress in an address to
the nation. In the course of it he said this:
"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, then we will have
destroyed the very foundation of the organization and
our best hope for establishing a real world order."
As I
note in a chapter of my book titled Goodbye to the
Security Council's Integrity, after the 1967 war
there simply was not the Eisenhower-like political
will to oblige Israel to behave like a normal state -
i.e. in accordance with international law and its
obligations as a member of the UN. What,
really, explains this lack of political will - in 1967
and still today? I
used to believe the short answer was the stranglehold
on American policy for the Middle East of the Zionist
lobby and its stooges in Congress. There's no mystery
about the prime source of the lobby's power. It's
money to fund election campaigns. If you were an
American and announced that you were going to run for
Congress or any other significant public office, you'd
be approached by the lobby. It would tell you the
policy position on Israel and then offer you a choice.
If you supported Israel, you would receive all the
campaign funding you needed to defeat your opponent.
If you were not interested, the funding would go to
your opponent to enable him or her to defeat you.
That's an over-simplification of how the system works
but it's also the essence of the reality.
Incidentally, I do NOT blame the Zionist lobby
for playing the game the way it does. It is only
playing according to The System's rules. I blame
America's pork-barrel system of politics which puts
what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest
bidders. It just so happens that the Zionist lobby in
association with its Christian fundamentalist allies
is one of the highest bidders, if not the highest. If
I had the opportunity to advise an American president,
I would say to him or her: "The best thing you could
do for your country is to give it some real democracy
by putting an end to your corrupt, pork-barrel
politics."
Today, and as I indicated in my recent article from
you quoted, Zionism and Peace Are Incompatible,
I am beginning to think that the awesome influence of
the Zionist lobby may not be the complete explanation
of the lack of political will. Because it is obviously
not in America's own best interests to go on
supporting Israel right or wrong and making enemies of
1.4 billion Muslims by so doing, the question I am
asking myself is this: Could it be that all American
presidents are frightened of confronting Zionism
because they know there is nothing nuclear-armed
Israeli leaders would not do if they were seriously
pressed to make peace on terms which they believed in
their own deluded minds would put Israel's security at
risk? That
question was provoked by my recall of a statement made
to me in a BBC Panorama interview by Golda Meir when
she was prime minister. At a point I interrupted her
to say: "I just want to be sure that I understand what
you're saying… You are saying that in a doomsday
situation Israel would be prepared to take the
region and the world down with it?" Without the
shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel
voice that could charm or intimidate American
presidents according to need, she replied: "Yes!
That's exactly what I am saying." In
those days Panorama, the BBC's flagship current
affairs program, was transmitted on a Monday evening
at 8.10pm. By 10.0pm, The Times, then a
seriously good newspaper not the Murdoch product it is
today, had changed its lead editorial to quote what
Golda had said to me. It then added its own opinion.
"We had better believe her."
Exactly what I am saying comes down to this. Even if
an American president was free to read the riot act to
Israel, if only to best protect America's own real
interests, it does not follow that its leaders would
say: "Okay. We'll do what you want." In my view it's
possible, even probable, that they would say: "Mr.
President, go to hell. If you push us too far, we'll
create mayhem in the region." KZ:
The pro-Palestinian journalist and activist Jeffrey
Blankfort told me in a recent interview about the
efforts made by the previous United State presidents
to hold back the influence of Israel and Zionist lobby
over the U.S. Congress. He cited the confrontation of
George Bush Sr. with the Zionist network in 1991 and
1992 when he denied Israel its request for $10 billion
in loan guarantees; however, Mr. Bush was eventually
forced to surrender and endorse the loan. Will the
same fate await President Obama who is said to be
determined to put forward a proposal for the
establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967
borders in the Security Council? AH:
About President Obama let me first of all say this. I
do not believe as many of his anti-Zionist critics do
that he came into office as a Zionist stooge,
programmed to do Zionism's bidding. If that was the
case, why would he have challenged Netanyahu and the
Zionist lobby over the settlements and set himself up
to be humiliated? My view is that Obama meant well but
was too naïve and inexperienced for the job and was
therefore bound to become a prisoner of the Zionist
lobby. I also think it is impossible for any new,
first term president to be completely aware of the
full extent of the Zionist lobby's stranglehold on
Congress until he is in the Oval Office trying to get
things done. As I
write in Is Peace Possible?, the Epilogue of
Volume Three of the American edition of my book, I
think there was a reason why Obama moved so quickly to
try to get a Middle East peace process going. He
knew something that all American presidents know about
when serious initiatives for peace can and cannot be
taken. I know what that something is because a
president told me a few months after events had denied
him a second term in office. Any American president
has only two windows of opportunity to break or try to
break the Zionist lobby's stranglehold on Congress on
matters to do with Israel/Palestine. The
first window is during the first nine months of his
first term because after that the soliciting of funds
for the mid-term elections begins. Presidents don't
have to worry on their own account about funds for the
mid-term elections, but with their approach no
president can do or say anything that would cost his
party seats in Congress. The second window of
opportunity is the last year of his second term if he
has one. In that year, because he can't run for a
third term, no president has a personal need for
election campaign funds or organized votes. As
things are there's a question mark over whether Obama
will get a second term, but with the mid-term
elections are out of the way, he might have one more
opportunity to put some real pressure on Israel - if
he has the will. There has been talk of a Palestinian
and presumably wider Arab initiative to have the
Security Council recognize Palestinian independence on
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If such a resolution
does find its way to the Security Council, Obama could
do what American Presidents always do when resolutions
are not to Israel's liking - veto it. But he could
also say and do nothing and effectively let the
resolution pass. What then? In
Ha'aretz on 20 October, Israeli commentator Aluf
Benn offered this answer. A Security Council decision
to recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank
and Gaza "would deem Israel
an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures
against Israel." In Aluff Benn's view the
international movement to boycott Israel would "gain
massive encouragement when Europe, China and India
turn their backs on Israel and erode the last remnants
of its legitimacy. Gradually the Israeli public will
also feel the diplomatic and economic stranglehold."
My guess is
that such a resolution will not find its way to the
Security Council because the Arab regimes are too
frightened of offending Zionism too much; but if it
does, Obama will have his last chance to demonstrate
that, as it relates to American efforts for peace in
the Middle East, his "Yes, we can" has not become "No,
we can't." KZ.
Arab leaders have shown signs that they're willing to
renormalize their ties with Israel. Politicians in
some of the Arab states have openly negotiated with
high-ranking Israeli officials and invited them to
their events. What are the benefits of this
renormalization for the Arab leaders while anger and
hatred against the Israeli regime is growing in the
Arab world on a daily basis? How can the Arab leaders
disregard the crowds of people who storm into streets
en masse to protest the aggressive and belligerent
policies of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza? AH:
Most Arabs quietly despise their leaders but I'm not
aware that they have stormed into the streets to
protest against Israel's policies. I would re-phrase
what I think is the essence of your question in this
way: "Do Arab leaders care about what happens to the
occupied and oppressed Palestinians?" My
short answer is "No". My longer answer is this.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. And there's no mystery about the nature
of this betrayal. When
the Palestine file was closed by Israel's 1948 victory
on the battlefield and the armistice agreements, the
divided and impotent Arab regimes secretly shared the
same hope as the Zionists and the major powers. It was
that the file would remain closed for ever. The
Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the
sacrificial lamb on the altar of political
expediency. Nor
is there any mystery about why the Arab regimes were
at one with the Zionists and the major powers in
hoping that there would never be a regeneration of
Palestinian nationalism. They all knew that if there
was, there would one day have to be a confrontation
with Zionism; and nobody wanted that. When
Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a few others lit the slow
burning fire of the regeneration, it was the security
services of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which took the
lead in trying to put it out. Fast
forward to 1982, Before Sharon sent the IDF all the
way to Beirut to exterminate the PLO's leadership and
destroy its infrastructure, [Persian] Gulf Arab
leaders met in secret, without advisers present, in
order to agree a message to the Reagan administration.
The message was to the effect that they would not
intervene in any way when Sharon made his move. After
that message was sent, one of the Arab leaders
present, Oman's Sultan Qaboos, said to Arafat: "Be
careful. You are going to ask for our help and it will
not come." And
let me add this. Last year I had a private
conversation in London with a major royal from the
Arab world. I said to him, "Nothing is going to change
in the Arab world until your regimes are more
frightened of their own masses than they are of
offending Zionism and America". He replied, "You're
right." I also said to him, "If the Zionists do resort
to a final round of ethnic cleaning to close the
Palestine file, Arab leaders, behind closed doors,
will give thanks and celebrate." His reply was the
same, "You're right." KZ.
You've implied in your article "Obama speaks at the
UN… Goodbye to peace" that if the Arab and Muslim
leaders were effectively united against the United
States whose ultimate objective is to consolidate and
empower the quisling government of Mahmoud Abbas,
Israel couldn't have succeeded in imposing its
expansionistic wills on the Palestinian nation and its
chances for legitimizing a Greater Israel which goes
beyond the borders of 1967 would have been
insignificant; however, we don't find such a
solidarity among the Muslim and Arab leaders.
except in the streets, as you put it. So what
will be the fate of Palestinian nation? Should they
surrender into what Israel has foreseen for them, that
is displacement, homelessness and destruction? A: My
point has never been that Arab and other Muslim
leaders have to be "against" the U.S. The main
difference at leadership level between the Jews and
the Arabs is that the Jews know how to play the game
of international politics and the Arabs don't. Put
another way, Zionism's key players know how to play
the cards they were dealt and Arab leaders don't.
Zionism's five main cards were and are the obscenity
of the Nazi holocaust for blackmail purposes; money
(virtually unlimited funds) and the influence it buys;
the organized Jewish vote in close American election
races; overwhelming military superiority; and, more
generally speaking, breathtakingly, brilliant
organization and coordination. The
Arabs had, and still have an ace that would have
trumped all of Zionism's cards: OIL.
Imagine what would have happened in the
immediate aftermath of the 1967 war if Arab leaders
had put their act together and sent one of their
number secretly to Washington DC to say something very
like the following to President Johnson behind closed
doors: "If you don't get Israel back behind its
pre-war borders, we'll turn off the oil taps." If
Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and
serious, he would have replied with something very
like the following: "I can't guarantee swift action on
Jerusalem but give me two or three weeks for the
rest." If
the Zionists had been in the Arab position, that is
how they would have played their hand. And that is not
pure speculation on my part. Over the years I have
been told so by a number of Israeli leaders including
former Directors of Military Intelligence. The
main point is that if Johnson had believed that Arab
leaders were united and serious, they would not
have had to turn off the oil taps. A secret,
credible threat to do so would have been enough to
cause Johnson or any president to put America's own
best interests first.
Against that background the question to be asked today
is something like this: What, in theory, could Arab
leaders still do to give themselves a reasonable
chance of countering Zionism's influence on American
policy for the Middle East?
Prefaced by a summary statement of all the initiatives
the Arabs including the Palestinians have taken for
peace. They could threaten to -
Sever their diplomatic relations with the U.S. -
Withdraw their financial support for America's broken
economy -
Turn off the oil taps Will
Arab leaders ever learn how to play their cards if
only to best protect their own longer term, real
interests? I
think not, and that takes me to the second part of
your question - What will be the fate of the
Palestinian nation and should the Palestinians
surrender to Zionism's will? The
main point is that the occupied and oppressed
Palestinians, the masses, are not going to
surrender to Zionism's will and accept crumbs from its
table; the crumbs being three or four Bantustans on
maximum 40% of the West Bank, which would not come
even close to satisfying the Palestinians' minimum
demand and need for some justice but which they could
call a state if they wished. It's not totally
impossible that under pressure from the Arab regimes
and America, a quisling Palestinian leadership will
seek to do such a deal with Israel, but it would be
rejected by the masses; and probably the quisling
Palestinian leader would be assassinated. The
question arising is what will Zionism's in-Israel
leaders do when they conclude that with bombs and
bullets and repressive measure of all kinds they
cannot break the will of the occupied and oppressed
Palestinians to continue their struggle? My guess is
that they will create a pretext to drive the
Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or
wherever. If that happens, the West Bank will be
soaked in blood, mostly Palestinian blood, and honest
reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust. It's
because I truly fear that is the most likely scenario
that I think the priority of the international
community should stopping the final Zionist ethnic
cleansing of Palestine. KZ:
A growing number of internet writers and technical
experts in America and many other countries believe
that Israel was behind or implicated in the 9/11
attacks. Do you think this conspiracy theory is
credible and, if you do, in what ways did 9/11 benefit
Israel? A: In
my view the starting point for any serious and honest
discussion of 9/11 has to be this question: Did the
impact of the planes and the heat of their burning
fuel bring the Twin Towers down? If the answer is
"Yes", there's no need for conspiracy theories. If the
answer is "No", the speculative question has to be -
Who did it and how and why? My
answer is "No". In my analysis there's enough evidence
- visual, technical and scientific, and from
eye-witnesses including fire fighters - to invite the
conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven,
were pre-wired for controlled demolition with
nanothermite, the highest-tech military
explosive. For
context, the first observation I'd like to offer is
that the mainstream Western media's complicity
in suppressing even questions and debate about what
really happened on 9/11 is consistent. What I
mean is that for the past 63 years - from the creation
of the Zionist state of Israel mainly by terrorism and
ethnic cleansing to the present the mainstream
media have been complicit in the suppression of the
truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict
in and over Palestine that became Israel. Put
another way, the mainstream media have been content to
peddle Zionism's propaganda lies. The two biggest lies
can be summed up in a very few words. The
first is that poor little Israel has lived in
constant danger of annihilation, the "driving into the
sea" of its Jews. The truth, as I document in
detail through the three volumes of the American
edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews,
is that Israel's existence has never, ever, been in
danger from any combination of Arab force.
Zionism's assertion to the contrary was the cover that
allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most - in
the Western world and America especially - with
presenting its aggression as self defense
and itself as the victim when it was and is the
oppressor. The
second is that Israel "never had Arab partners for
peace" That is complete nonsense. I've already
mentioned Arafat's pragmatism and work for peace to
make the point, but here's another example. From
almost the moment he came to power in 1951, Eygpt's
President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel.
He had secret exchanges with Israel's foreign
minister, Moshe Sharret, who was in my view the only
completely sane Israeli leader of his time. For
wanting to make peace with Nasser and the Arabs,
Sharett was destroyed by Israel's founding father and
first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion Prior
to 9/11, the best single example of the mainstream
media's complicity in the suppression of the truth as
it relates to conflict in the Middle East is
Israel's attack on the American spy ship, the USS
Liberty, on 8th June 1967, the 4th
day of the 6-Day war. (I was the first Western
correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the
advancing Israelis, so I was in the Sinai desert at
the time). That attack killed 37 Americans and
seriously wounded more than 90 others. If things had
gone according to the plan of the man who ordered that
attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the
Liberty would have been sunk with all hands on
board, leaving nobody to tell the story of what really
happened… If it had been an Arab/Muslim attack
on an American vessel, it's reasonable to speculate
that America would have resorted to a military strike,
if not war, on the country or countries it held
responsible. What did President Johnson do? Out of
fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in
Congress, he ordered a cover-up which remains in force
to this day. And the mainstream media went along
with it, as it still does. Now
to my summary thoughts on the possible, probable
involvement of Israel's Mossad in 9/11. I will
offer you two scenarios - A or B. In
scenario A it's not impossible that 9/11
started out as an Arab/Muslim idea. But even if
this was the case, Mossad would have had an inside
track very quickly. From almost the moment of the
Zionist state's birth, Mossad put great effort into
placing agents inside every Arab regime, every Arab
military and security establishment and every
Arab/Muslim liberation movement and terrorist group.
Many of Mossad's best and most effective agents were
Moroccan and other North African Jews because they
could pose most perfectly as Arabs. In a moment I'll
tell you the short story of Mossad's penetration of
the Abu Nidal terrorist group. In
Scenario A the question is: Did Mossad tell
anybody? My speculation is that it told some in
the CIA and a few of Zionism's neo-con associates,
Jews and non-Jews, including Vice President Cheney I
call him the real Doctor Strangelove and the likes of
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In this scenario
Mossad could have asked, "What do we do about this?"
And the answer could have been something like, "We'll
use it for the Pearl Harbor-like pretext we need." In
this scenario, 9/11, even if it started out as an
Arab/Muslim idea, was a joint Israeli/Mossad and
American/neo-con conspiracy.
For background here's a very short story about
Mossad's penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group.
Abu Nidal was a member of Arafat's Fatah but he broke
with it when Arafat had come to terms with the reality
of Israel's existence and was preparing the ground on
his side for compromise with Israel. The Abu Nidal
group, based mainly in Iraq, was responsible for the
assassinations, mainly in Europe, of more than 20 of
Arafat's emissaries who were telling Western
governments behind closed doors that the Fatah-dominated
PLO was serious about compromise with Israel. An
investigation by Arafat and Abu Iyad, Fatah's counter
intelligence chief, subsequently revealed that Abu
Nidal was an alcoholic - he consumed between one
and two bottles of whisky a day, and for much of most
days he was drunk, not sober. His number two was
running the show and targeting those to be
assassinated and directing the killing. Abu Nidal's
number two was a Mossad agent.
It was, in fact, two Palestinian students in London
who were activated by the Abu Nidal group to
assassinate Israeli ambassador Argov. It was that
assassination attempt in 1982 that gave Israeli Prime
Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon the pretext
they needed to launch their invasion of Lebanon all
the way to Beirut, for the purpose of exterminating
the entire leadership of the PLO and destroying its
infrastructure… Ambassador Argov survived and quite
some time after the event, he indicated that he
suspected Israel's involvement (he could only have
meant targeting) in the attempt to kill him.
Scenario B has to be considered because it's a
fact that some of the Arab/Muslim plotters, actual
or alleged, were under surveillance by various Western
intelligence agencies for years before 9/11. The
agencies who were tracking them as possible/probable
terrorists included those of America, Germany and
Israel. In
this scenario it's not impossible that the idea for
9/11 was put into the heads of possible/probable
Arab/Muslim terrorists by Mossad agents. In
this scenario, Mossad was actually running the show
with key American neo-cons fixing things in America to
make sure the attack was successful. From all that
happened on the day, I'm not convinced that President
Bush was in the pre-9/11 fixing loop. I think Cheney
was most probably in control of the American executive
oversight of what was essentially a Mossad false
flag operation. Who else, for example, could have
authorized the blocking of President Bush's electronic
communications with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for a
critical period?
Question: How did 9/11 serve the interests of the
lunatic right in Israel and its neo-con associates in
America? In
their view Saddam Hussein represented the only
foreseeable potential Arab challenge to Greater
Israel's continued military domination of the whole
Arab world. He had to be removed. By falsely
claiming that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attack,
Zionism and its neo-con associates in America set the
stage for President Bush to be conned into going to
war.
Zionism's intention to get rid of Saddam Hussein was
not, in fact, a secret. In 1996, under the
chairmanship of Richard Perle, widely known in
informed circles as the "Prince of Darkness", American
Zionism presented a policy document with the title
A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm.
It urged
incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have no
second thoughts about making a clean break with the
Rabin policy of negotiating with the PLO and trading
land for peace. Israel's claim to all the land it
occupied was "legitimate and noble", the policy paper
said. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs
of our rights is a solid basis for the future."
After the clean break Israel would be free to shape
its "strategic environment". What would that
involve? Among other things, "re-establishing the
principle of pre-emption (pre-emptive strikes)...
focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq...
weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria,
Hizbollah and Iran."
In fact the
commitment of Zionism's in-America fixers and their
neo-con associates to getting rid of Saddam Hussein
goes back further than 1996. They were angry when
President Bush the First refused to complete the job
when he assembled a coalition to eject Iraq from
Kuwait. After that Zionism's in-America fixers and
their neo-con associates needed two things:
A president
who was dumb enough to buy their ideas
- they got that with George "Dubya" Bush; and
A "Pearl
Harbour" like event to trigger the action.
They got that with 9/11.
But there was
much more to it. 9/11 was a win-win for Zionism in
another way.
Predictably it
provoked a rising tide of Islamophobia
throughout the Western world and across America
especially. In the minds of uninformed and ignorant
Americans (i.e. most Americans), that in turn gave
added credibility to the Zionist state's claim to be
America's only true and reliable ally in the whole of
the Arab and wider Muslim world.
As I say in
the Dear America introduction to the American edition
of Volume 1 of my book, when Americans asked "Why do
they hate us?", they were more or less all
Arabs and Muslims everywhere. And I asked
this question:
What would
Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to
declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush
had caused the Why-do-they-hate-us question to be
addressed seriously?
The short answer I give in
my Dear America Introduction - the long answer is in
the three volumes of my book - begins with the
statement that the overwhelming majority of all
Arabs and Muslims everywhere do NOT hate America or
Americans. What almost all Arabs and Muslims
everywhere DO hate is American foreign
policy - its double standards in general
and, in particular, its unconditional support
for an Israel which ignores UN resolutions,
demonstrates its contempt for international law and
human rights conventions and resorts to state
terrorism… A related truth is that for decades
very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they
could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life
there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other
Muslims who would opt for American residence and
citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because
of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of
Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the
Free and licking its lips.
KZ: Over the past five years and
since the escalation of international controversy over
Iran's nuclear program, Israel has repeatedly
threatened Iran with an imminent military strike and
supported the imposition of financial sanctions
against the country over its nuclear activities. Will
Israel eventually attack Iran? What will be the
consequences of such an attack for the Middle East?
AH: I do not believe that Iran is
developing nuclear weapons but, for the sake of
argument, let's assume that I am wrong and that in the
not too distant future it does possess some. Does
anybody seriously think it would launch a nuclear
first strike on Israel? Of course it would not. If it
did, the whole of Iran would be devastated by a
retaliatory response. No
Iranian leadership is ever going to invite such a
catastrophe. Unless Zionism's leaders are completely
out of their minds, they know this. So why, really,
are they playing up the alleged Iranian nuclear
threat?
I think they are doing so for three
reasons.
One is to deflect attention from their
crimes, in part to reduce the prospect of real
pressure on them to be serious about peace on terms
virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and
Muslims everywhere could just about accept.
Another is what might be called a
strategic consideration. Israel's leaders know that if
Iran did posses nuclear weapons, their freedom to go
on imposing their will on the region would be greatly
restricted.
But most of all there is Zionism's
need for Israeli Jews to feel frightened.
A good explanation of why was
provided by Ira Cherna in a Truthout post in
November 2009. It was headlined Israel's Pathology.
Cherna asked -
How can it be that
pathological feelings of fear,
weakness and victimization are "comforting" to very
many Israelis? His answer
was the following:
"For starters, they automatically
put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame
the weak victim for the violence? All the trouble, it
seems, is started by the other side... And if all the
trouble is started by the other side, then all the
fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and
victimization seem to prove that ‘We're moral.'
Obviously, it's our enemies who are immoral and thus
to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no
reason even to consider changing any of their policies
or behaviors."
Will Israel eventually attack Iran?
Where Zionism is concerned nothing is
impossible, but I prefer to think that even Israel's
leaders, despite their rhetoric, are not that mad. As
I'm sure you know, there have been reports that Obama
sent messengers to Israel to tell its leaders that
attacking Iran was not an option. That suggests to me
there won't be an attack on Iran on his watch. But
what if Obama doesn't get a second term? If the
Republican and Tea Party lunatics come to power in the
2012 American elections, I imagine that all bets will
be off. In a worst case scenario there's a Mossad
nuclear false flag operation in America which is
blamed on Iran. Within minutes if not seconds of it
happening, the cry goes up, "Bomb the bastards!" The
only thing then to be decided would be whether the
U.S. should give Israel the greenlight or do the job
itself.
What would be the consequences of an
attack on Iran?
Short answer, catastrophe for the
region - sustained conflict and instability; huge
damage to American and other Western interests
throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world; and quite
possibly the collapse of what remains of the global
economy, this because Iran has the ability to disrupt
oil exports from the Gulf and provoke a worldwide oil
crisis.
It's also not impossible that an
attack on Iran would encourage its leadership, any
leadership, to acquire nuclear weapons. KZ:
What's your prediction for the future of Israel's
political entity? Will it continue to survive or will
it terminate in a destiny like that of the apartheid
regime of South Africa or the Soviet Union?
AH: I personally think Zionism's
colonial enterprise is doomed. In my analysis there
was a pre-condition for the survival of the Zionist,
not Jewish state. When it closed the Palestine file in
1948/49, it had to keep the file closed, prevent a
re-generation of Palestinian nationalism. It has
failed to do that.
That fact takes us to the real threat
to Israel's existence. It is not Hamas, Hizbollah,
Iran or any combination of Arab and other Muslim
force. The real threat is the demographic time-bomb
of occupation.
In occupation of the West Bank, Israel
has three options:
1. Formally annexing it and granting
all of its citizens equal rights, this to enable
Israel to go on claiming that it is a democracy. The
problem with this option s that it would bring about
an end of the Zionist state by political means
because, in due course, the Arab citizens of Greater
Israel would outnumber and outvote its Jewish
citizens.
2. Formally annexing the West Bank but
denying Greater Israel's Arab citizens (the majority
in the making) equal rights. In this scenario Greater
Israel would have to treat its Arab citizens even
worse than the black majority in South Africa was
treated by the apartheid regime. And that would not be
acceptable to many Jews of the world and, perhaps, a
significant number of Israeli Jews. It would also
present the governments of the international community
with no choice, at some point, but to declare Greater
Israel a pariah state and impose sanctions on it.
3. Resort to a final round of ethnic
cleansing - provoking an all-out confrontation with
the Palestinians to give the IDF and the armed
settlers the pretext to drive the Palestinians off the
West Bank and into Jordan or wherever, in the name of
self-defense, of course. If the Palestinians refused
to flee, there would be, as I said earlier, a
bloodbath. A Zionist holocaust.
As things are today it's my view that,
at a point, Israel's leaders will go for the third
option.
When they do there will such outrage
in the world that governments including the one in
Washington DC will have to say to Israel, "Enough is
enough!" And the Zionist state will then be subjected
to diplomatic isolation and crippling sanctions, with
serious efforts to call and hold its political and
military leaders to account for their crimes.
How will Israel's leaders respond?
As Golda Meir said, in a doomsday
situation they will be prepared to take the region and
possibly the world down with them.
If you asked me if I really
believe that's how the story of the struggle for
Palestine could end, I would answer "Yes", and this is
why.
Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism
which created a state for some Jews in the Arab
heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
Zionism is a pathological mindset. And what the
deluded Zionist mind actually thinks is this: "The
world has always hated Jews and always will." In other
words, the pathological Jewish mindset assumes that
Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning
against Jews) is inevitable.
In the shadow of the Nazi holocaust,
that way of thinking led Zionism's leaders into
believing there was nothing they should not do to
preserve Israel as a refuge of last resort for all
Jews when the world turned against them again.
And the end, mad, Zionist logic speaks
for itself. "If the world won't let us do whatever we
believe to be necessary to preserve Israel as a refuge
of last resort for all Jews, our enterprise is doomed,
but we won't go down alone." - Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media
correspondent. He has interviewed political commentator and linguist Noam
Chomsky, member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke, Australian politician Ian
Cohen, member of German Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President
Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council advisor Peter D. Feaver,
Nobel Prize laureate in Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in
Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in biology Robin Warren, famous
German political prisoner Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff,
American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist Eric Margolis, former
assistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts,
American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud and the former President of the
American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis. |
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