By
Ismail Salami, Press TV,
Tehran
Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and
their global consequences and terrifying implications - the possibility of a
Clash of Civilizations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another
great turning against the Jews - for nearly 40 years:
- As a
correspondent for ITN's News At Ten and the BBC's Panorama program (covering
wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world).
- As a
researcher and author. (His first book Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker? was
published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1984 and subsequently in several updated
editions over a decade).
- As a participant at leadership level, working
to a Security Council background briefing, in the covert diplomacy of the search
for peace.
Alan Hart thus brings to the pages of his latest book,
Zionism: The Real
Enemy of the Jews, and to the debating chamber, a deep
understanding of why, really, the Countdown to Armageddon is on and how it can
be stopped.
He has been to war with the Israelis and the Arabs
but the learning experience he values most, and which he believes gave him rare
insight, came from his one-to-one private conversations over the years with many
leaders on both sides of the conflict. With, for example, Golda Meir, Mother
Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. The significance of these private
conversations was that they enabled Alan to be aware of the truth of what
leaders really believed and feared as opposed to what they said in public for
propaganda and myth-sustaining purposes.
Alan has long believed that
what peacemaking needs above all else is some TRUTH-TELLING, about many things
but, especially, the difference between Zionist mythology and real history, and,
the difference between Judaism and Zionism and thus why it is perfectly possible
to be passionately anti-Zionist (anti Zionism's colonial enterprise, that is)
without being in any way, shape or form
anti-Semitic.
Overview: Tail v Dog?
The
mother and father of all questions concerning US intentions for the Middle East
(of British terminology) and Iran is this: Who, really, calls the policy shots?
In the “expert” community this is known as the “tail v dog” question. The full
version of it is this: Is it the tail of the Zionist state and its awesomely
powerful lobby in the US that wags the American dog, or does the dog wag its
tail?
In my analysis, which is shared, for example, by Ilan
Pappe, Israel's leading “revisionist” (which means honest) historian, the answer
is that it's mainly the Zionist tail that wags the American dog. As I
demonstrate in my epic, two-volume book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of The Jews, it
is a fact that, with the arguable exception of Lyndon Johnson, every American
President, including the idiot in the White House at present, tried to draw red
lines that Israel should not cross; and on most occasions Israel put two fingers
up and crossed them.
There is no mystery about why the Zionist lobby
(AIPAC plus) has such power. What passes for democracy in America is for sale to
the highest bidder, and one of the highest bidders, and certainly the best
organized and the most effective, is the Zionist lobby, now in association with
Christian evangelical fundamentalism and parts if not all of the MIC (Military
Industrial Complex). The Zionist lobby has three main weapons of influence:
- money, apparently unlimited, to fund election campaigns (candidates
who offend Zionism can be and are destroyed - outspent);
- the organized
Jewish vote in close election races (in half a dozen critical constituencies);
and
- the use of the obscenity of the Nazi Holocaust as a blackmail card
to silence criticism of Israel and suppress informed and honest debate. (On this
front the Zionist lobby is assisted by the fact that, out of fear of offending
Zionism, the mainstream media in America and throughout the mainly Gentile
Judeo-Christian or Western world is complicit in Zionism's suppression of the
truth of history. What, really, does the media fear? Punishment by the
withdrawal of advertising revenue).
That said, it is my opinion (which
is also shared by Ilan Pappe and many well informed others of all faiths and
none) that Zionism's success to date is due only 50 percent to its own efforts
and resources. The other 50 percent is due to the divisions and impotence of the
regimes and elites of the existing Arab Order, regimes and elites which are
rightly perceived by their masses to be (more by default than design, I say)
American-and-Zionist stooges. A truth is that the Arabs had an ace card which
could have trumped all of Zionism's cards - OIL. The 1967 war was a war of
Israeli aggression, not self-defense. If, after it, Arab leaders had been united
and prepared to play the oil card, they could have changed the course of
history. How so? Suppose Arab leaders had sent one of their number [ones] to the
White House to say to the president, in private, behind closed doors, “If you
don't get Israel back behind its borders as they were on the eve of the war,
we'll turn off the oil.” What would the president (any president) have replied?
If he had believed the Arabs were united and serious, he would have
said, “Give me a few days and I'll do it”. The point being that the Arabs would
not have had to turn off the oil taps and lose revenue because a credible threat
to do so would have been enough. If the boot had been on the other foot - if the
Zionists had been the Arabs - that's the way they would have played the game.
The main difference between Zionist and Arab leaders is that the former always
knew how to play the cards they had been dealt, the latter did not and do not.
(The one exception was King Feisal. He was intending to unite the Arab and the
wider Muslim world to play the oil card - he as good as put Kissinger on notice
to that effect - and that, almost certainly, is why he was assassinated).
It is, of course, true that since George “Dubya” Bush came to power, the
neo-cons have been calling most of the policy shots in America. But also true is
that many of the neo-cons are hardest core Zionists. In my analysis it was these
Zionists, led by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who were the prime pushers
for war with Iraq. And their main concern was not oil, but creating a situation
in which the Zionist state of Greater Israel would remain forever the
unchallenged and unchallengeable superpower of the region. We know from their
own revealed documentation (their briefing paper to incoming Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu, for example) what their strategy was and is….. To take out
Saddam Hussein, to roll back Syria and then to go for the kill - regime change -
in Iran.
That, I believe, is the strategy now unfolding.
Is there a possibility of a US or Israeli attack on the Islamic
republic? If yes, what do you think the consequences will be?
An attack on Iran is not a “possibility” or even a probability.
It is a certainty (assuming only that Cheney and the neo-cons, Zionist and
others, remain in command and control of US policy). The only thing that has
changed in recent months is the justification the Bush regime (more totalitarian
than democratic) will give for an attack.
Because it's not completely
stupid, the Bush regime has realized that its propaganda campaign to convince
public opinion in America and throughout the Western world that Iran poses an
imminent nuclear weapons threat has failed. Put another way, many if not most
Americans and virtually all Europeans now understand that the war on Iraq was
justified by a pack of lies about Saddam Hussein's military strike capabilities
and intentions. American and European public opinion will not buy another (and
actually very similar) pack of lies to justify war on Iran. So the Bush regime
has had to change its story to sell the need for an attack on Iran.
The
new story, now being developed, is that Iran is to blame for many of America's
troubles and casualties in Iraq. In other words, and as Seymour Hersh has noted,
the Bush regime is in the process of REDEFINING THE WAR IN IRAQ (and Afghanistan) AS A STRATEGIC
BATTLE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN.
The final justification for an actual attack on Iran will include the line that
in Iraq (and Afghanistan) “it's the Iranians who are killing our boys.” This
will enable the Bush regime to present American soldiers and so America as the
victim (of the “axis of evil” - now minus North Korea? - controlled by Iran's
leaders).
What form will an American attack on Iran
take?
The most likely scenario is a massive, devastating air
attack with conventional bombs and missiles with the aim of wiping out, in two
or three days (the Americans will hope), the Revolutionary Guards and all of
Iran's defense and counter-attack capabilities (weapons, communications,
everything). It will be a massive attack because the Americans will factor into
the equation the possibility that Iran might retaliate by causing oil exports
from the region to be blocked which, if it happened, could bring about the
breakdown of the global economy. So the American attack will be designed to
prevent Iran having the possibility of exercising this option.
A reading
of published material (including leaks from people with access to the inside
circle of policy makers) invites the conclusion that Western and Mossad agents
have been inside Iran for a long time gathering target coordinates and other
related information. (Some months ago a German report, apparently confirmed,
said that Germany's intelligence service had provided Israel with the passports
of 300 dead Germans).
When is an American air attack on Iran
most likely?
For two reasons I speculate that February/March
and/or possibly April is most likely. The Bush regime needs time to complete the
demonization of Iran (a process that might well include faking and planting
evidence). Also at this time the primaries for the American congressional and
presidential elections will be getting seriously underway and the Bush regime
will be seeking to wrongfoot the Democrats by saying, “You can't oppose this
attack/war because Iranians are killing our guys in Iraq.” (It's by no means
impossible that Bush regime and/or Israeli agents will stage a terrorist attack
to pin the blame on Iran as proof of Iran's “murderous activities” - a phrase
Bush used in August when speaking to the national convention of the American
Legion).
It's worth noting that the analysis of some anti-Zionist Jews
speculates about an attack on Iran in three stages:
1. Israel attacks.
2. Iran Retaliates.
3. The US comes to Israel's aid.
As it was
put to me by an anti-Zionist Jewish friend: “This scenario (similar to the 1956
Suez War Conspiracy) would get around the reluctance of large parts of the US
establishment to support an American first strike. But helping poor little
Israel would be much more popular, especially in the Democrat-dominated
Congress. From the viewpoint of US neo-imperialists, this is precisely what
Israel is for.”
Why “especially in the Democratic-dominated Congress”?
Unlike the Republican Party, the Democratic Party could almost not exist without
Zionist lobby organized funding. An interesting observation on this was made
some months ago by an eminent Jewish American, Norman Birnbaum who is professor
emeritus at Georgetown University Law School. In an article published on the
Open Democracy web site, he wrote: “The Democratic Party cannot hope to develop
an alternative American foreign policy while retaining its present financial and
intellectual dependence on the Israel lobby.” (I disagree with Birnbaum on one
point. It's not an Israel lobby, it's a Likud lobby. A statement to that effect
was made to me in private conversation by Shimon Peres in 1980, when he was the
leader of the Labor Party and hoping to become Israel's next prime minister.
Peres knew that a second term in office for Prime Minister Begin would see the
creation of settlement facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank on a scale
which would prevent any future Israeli government from withdrawing for peace out
of fear of provoking a Jewish civil war).
I do not subscribe to the
Jewish anti-Zionist 1,2,3 war scenario because I think the Bush regime wants
what it believes will be the glory of an America first strike; and as I have
indicated above, I think the Bush regime also believes that it will be able to
get away with it, at least so far as American public opinion is concerned, by
successfully selling the story that Iran is behind most of America's troubles
and casualties in Iraq
What now has to be factored in is the
significance of a great drama that has been taking place behind closed doors in
Washington DC. News of the drama was broken on 27/28 September on the web site
of the Wayne Madsen Report. Wayne
is one of the best informed and most respected investigative journalists in
America. The following are the first two paragraphs of his four-page, detailed
report:
WMR has learned from US and foreign intelligence sources that
the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed
with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East
via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air
Force, supported by US intelligence personnel, successfully revealed the
ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to
internal opposition within the Air Force and US Intelligence Community.
My comments:
* The intended destination of the six nuclear missiles
- the very latest technology which Israel does not yet possess - could only have
been Israel.
* Nuclear weapons cannot be moved without the authorization
of the President. Implication? Either Bush knew and approved - possibly putting
his signature on a piece of paper put in front of him by Cheney without knowing
what he was signing; or Cheney had the necessary authority delegated to him by
Bush. (Bush is, apparently, a very lazy man as well as a stupid man).
Why did Cheney and the neo-cons want Israel to have these particular
nuclear missiles? My speculation is that Israel is concerned that an American
air attack might not be as effective as they would like it to be….. That the
Israelis have expressed their concern to Cheney….. And that in response Cheney
said to the Israelis, in effect: “If we screw up and don't do a complete job,
you can use these missiles.”
A related matter….. What was the Israeli
Air Force's mission when, on 6 September, it attacked a target in Syria? Latest
information, (including that from the web site of the magazine Aviation Week
& Space Technology), suggests to me that Israeli F15 and F16 jets were
testing the effectiveness of the latest American (cutting edge) technology for
blinding enemy radar. It, the “Suter airborne network attack system”, obviously
works well because it allowed the Israeli planes to enter and operate in Syrian
airspace without being detected by Syria's Russian-supplied state-of-the-art
radar systems. (I note reports saying that Iran is worried because it has the
same Russian-supplied defense system. Presumably the Russians are now working
flat out against the clock to come up with a counter measure).
What are the most likely consequences of an American or Israeli
attack on Iran?
Much will depend on Iran's response (if it is
able to respond after an American “shock and awe” attack). In this interview I'm
not going to speculate about Iran's possible responses, but I will say this
much….. If it goes badly wrong for the Americans, I would not rule out the
possibility that Israel (and possibly America) will launch nuclear strikes (drop
nuclear bombs) on Iran.
In Volume Two of my book I quote Ezer Weizman
when he was Israel's defense minister telling me in private that Sharon was mad
enough to nuke the entire Arab world!
And in the Prologue to Volume One
I quote Golda Meir telling me, in an on-the-record interview for the BBC's
Panorama program when she was prime minister, that if ever Israel was in danger
of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region
and the whole world down with it!
The kind of madness indicated above is
alive and well in Israel and Washington DC. (And possibly Paris under its new
management).
At a minimum an attack on Iran will set the stage for
escalating and unending conflict, which could go all the way to World War III,
destroying the global economy as events unfold.
Arab and Muslim masses
everywhere will be driven to new depths of anger but in the short term it is
likely that their repressive regimes will keep the lid on violent protest. But
for the longer term….. an attack on Iran will serve as the best possible
recruiting sergeant for violent Islamic fundamentalism [extremism] and bring
forward the day when the corrupt and impotent regimes of the existing Arab order
will be toppled by people power. (The first real Arab revolution).
Western and Arab governments are hoping that an attack on Iran would
cause Iranians to rise up and overthrow “the Islamic regime”. In theory, and
because there is a measure of discontent in Iran with the ways things are, that
might be a possibility; but I think it much more likely that an attack would
have completely the opposite effect - unite all Iranians behind their
“regime”.
What do you think of the US-Zionist alliance?
I think I've said enough on this above. The only point I wish to add is
that American administration support for the Zionist state [regime] of Israel
right or wrong is not in America's own best interests. In fact it is the most
serious threat to those interests. The only hopeful sign is that those of us of
all faiths and none who are making this point in our books and on public
platforms are beginning to make an impression on the ignorance of Western public
opinion.
How far do you
think Zionism has tarnished the image of Judaism in the world?
The major statement I make on the subject of Zionism and
Judaism is that Zionism is destroying Judaism.
As stated on the back
jacket of Volume One, my book has two central themes. “One is how the modern
state of Israel, the child of Zionism, became its own worst enemy and a threat
not only to the peace of the region and the world, but also to the best
interests of Jews everywhere and the moral integrity of Judaism itself. The
other main and related theme is why, really, the whole Arab and wider Muslim
world is an explosion of frustration and despair waiting for its time to
happen.”
THE KEY to understanding why there is conflict in and over
Palestine, why a resolution of it has remained beyond the reach of politics and
diplomacy and who must do what and why for justice and peace is knowledge of the
difference between Judaism and Zionism.
Zionism's ability to suppress
informed and honest debate is due, mainly, to its success in making the
Judeo-Christian or Western world believe that Judaism and Zionism are one and
the same thing. This enables Zionism to assert that criticism of the Zionist
state of Israel is a manifestation of classical anti-Semitism (prejudice against
and even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews). The truth is that Judaism
and Zionism are total opposites.
JUDAISM is the religion of Jews (not
“the Jews” because not all Jews are religious), and, like Islam and
Christianity, Judaism has at its core a set of ethical principles and moral
values.
ZIONISM is a secular, colonialist ideology which makes a mockery
of, and has contempt for, the ethical principles and moral values of Judaism.
The evidence which supports this statement begins with the fact that Israel was
created mainly by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
For those who
might wish to have a much deeper understanding of the difference between Zionism
and Judaism, I recommend a particular book - A Threat From Within, A CENTURY OF
JEWISH OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM. Its author is a Jewish Canadian, Yakov Rabkin, who
is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. When Yakov was in London,
I asked him a very explicit question: “Is it reasonable to say that the Jews of
the world now have a choice to make - either to reaffirm their commitment to
Judaism and renounce Zionism, or to reaffirm or affirm their commitment to
Zionism and renounce Judaism?” He replied with one word, “YES!”
The
truth is not only that Zionism and Judaism are total opposites, but that the
return of Jews to the land of biblical Israel by the efforts of man (one
possible but woefully inadequate definition of Zionism) was PROSCRIBED by
Judaism…. Also a fact, unknown to this day to almost all Gentiles and Jews, is
that many if not most of the Jews who went to Palestine in answer to Zionism's
call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. The incoming Zionist
Jews were mainly foreign nationals of many lands, descended from those who
became Jewish by conversion to Judaism centuries after the fall of the ancient
Jewish kingdom of Israel and what is called the “dispersal” into “oblivion” of
its people. The notion that there are two entire peoples with an equally valid
claim to the same land is an historical nonsense. The relatively few Jews with a
valid claim were, are, the descendants of those who stayed in Palestine through
everything. They numbered only a few thousand at the time of Zionism's birth;
they regarded themselves as Palestinians; and they were fiercely opposed to
Zionism's colonial enterprise - because they rightly feared that it would make
them as well as the incoming, alien Zionist Jews enemies of the Arabs among whom
they had lived in peace and security.
Arabs and other Muslims have
always known the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Throughout much of
their history, Arabs and other Muslims were the best protectors of Jews - as
Iran in terms of its own Jewish community still is today! It was Zionism's
colonial enterprise that poisoned the relationship, but not to the point at
which Arabs and other Muslims blame all Jews for Zionism's crimes. (As President
Ahmadinejad has said, and I often say myself, the extermination of Jews in
Europe was a European crime for which, in effect, the Arabs were punished).
Why is it so important for the citizens of the nations of the
Judeo-Christian or Western world to be informed of the difference between
Judaism and Zionism? Knowledge of the difference is the explanation of (a) why
it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist (opposed to Zionism's
colonial enterprise) without being in any way, shape or form anti-Semitic; and
(b) why it is wrong to blame all Jews for the crimes of the few.
The
significance of (b) above is in the following. Though still suppressed,
classical anti-Semitism is on the rise throughout the Judeo-Christian world in
which most Jews live. It is happening in response to Israel's arrogance of power
and the correct perception of Israel as the oppressor. The more it becomes
apparent that Israel is the obstacle to peace on any terms most Palestinians and
other Arabs and Muslims could accept, the more this antipathy to all Jews will
grow, with the real danger that it will break out, become unsuppressed, and
manifest itself as violent anti-Semitism. It's my Gentile view, which I know is
shared in private by some eminent Jews, that Holocaust II (shorthand for another
great turning against Jews) WILL happen at a foreseeable point in the future
unless the Judeo-Christian world is made aware of the difference between Judaism
and Zionism. It's also my view that if the monster of classical anti-Semitism
does go on the rampage again, it might well start its journey in America.
What is your opinion
about the recent Zionist move to cut off fuel supplies to Gaza?
The Zionist state's collective punishment of the people of Gaza
is a war crime. (What else would one expect of a criminal state which is above
and beyond international law?)
Zionism is not remotely interested, and
never has been, in peace on any terms the Palestinians and the vast majority of
Arabs and other Muslims everywhere could accept. Zionism's philosophy of doom is
“them or us”.
Zionism's end-game strategy for a solution to the
Palestine problem now leaves nothing to the imagination. Zionism's military and
political leaders in Israel (and their lobbyists in America) believe that by
means of brute force and reducing them to abject poverty, they can break the
will of the Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights…. The
assumption being that, at a point, and out of total despair, the Palestinians
will be prepared to accept crumbs from Zionism's table in the shape of two or
three Bantustans, or, better still, will abandon their homeland and seek a new
life in other countries. The question that's almost too awful to think about is
something like this: What will the Zionists do when it becomes apparent even to
them that they can't destroy Palestinian nationalism with bombs and bullets and
brutal repressive measures of all kinds?
My guess (Ilan Pappe agrees
with me) is that they, the Zionists, will go for a final round of ethnic
cleansing - to drive the Palestinians into Jordan and beyond. That, I fear, will
be Zionism's final solution to the Palestine problem. If that happens, the West
Bank will be turned red with blood, mostly Palestinian blood. Honest reporters
will describe it as a Zionist holocaust.
Do you think the US
government is using the terrorist activities in the world in order to create
fear of Islam? And do you think there is a clash of religions in the
world?
Yes. The Bush regime is playing the fear card to enable
it to bring in legislation, including authoritarian powers for the president,
which is eroding the democratic freedoms and human rights of the American
people. (There are some American commentators, including former members of the
Establishment, who believe that what we are witnessing in the US is the
emergence of new fascism).
There is a respectable case for saying that
the US (I mean its political, financial and military Establishment) needs an
enemy (as Zionism does), and that having lost the “evil empire” of the Soviet
Union, Islam is the necessary new enemy. The argument in support of this
contention can be simply stated. The Military Industrial Complex is the single
biggest creator of wealth and jobs, but it depends for much of its funding for
research and development and production on government funding - the taxes
citizens pay. Without an enemy and a perceived threat, government would not be
able to justify its vastly disproportionate spending of public money on the war
machine.
A question I often ask on public speaking platforms is this:
Given that President Bush is the best recruiting sergeant for violent Islamic
fundamentalism, why is it so? Is it (a) because he is ignorant of history and
doesn't know what he is doing, and is, in a word, stupid; or is it (b) because
he, or those who pull his strings, want a Clash of Civilizations,
Judeo-Christian v Islamic?
In private conversation I have put this
question to 20 real experts of all faiths and none. Almost all of them, 18, said
the answer was (a) and (b). My own view is that the mad men in America might not
want a Clash of Civilizations but do not care if it happens as a consequence of
imposing their will on the nations of the Arab and wider Muslim world.
At the present time I believe we are on course for a Clash of
Civilizations.
How well can the Muslims be integrated into the
European community despite the Western Islamophobia?
If the
question means is there a safe and secure future for Muslims who have become (or
want to become) citizens of the European nations, my answer has to be - I'm not
sure. If American-led Western policy does not change - i.e. if it continues to
fuel violent Islamic fundamentalism - Islamophobia will most likely turn
violent, and Muslims in the European nations (and America) will be in peril.
Regarding Turkey's probable integration into the formal institution of
the European Union, I can see only problems ahead - i.e. as a consequence of
that integration. Despite current French and other objections, Turkey probably
will be accepted (with America's blessing) as a full member because it is,
behind the democratic window dressing, a military dictatorship. Turkey will thus
be viewed by European governments (and the one in Washington DC) as not only the
acceptable face of Islam but also as a wall or fortress - a strategic asset in
the confrontation with “militant Islam”. Put another way, Turkey would be
required more than ever to do the West's bidding, and that, surely, would put
its government and military on a collusion course with most of its own people….?
IN CONCLUSION I repeat….. My view that an attack on Iran is a certainty
not a possibility or a probability assumes that Cheney and his neo-cons,
including the Zionists, retain their ability to call the policy shots. If
President Bush listens to others, it might not happen.
What, if
anything, Iran could do to prevent an attack is a very good
question.
... Payvand News - 10/9/07 ... --
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