Yesterday’s edition of the I for Monday, 14th December, carried a couple of interesting pieces of archaeological news. The first was a snippet on page 2, ‘Bible ‘throne room’ found in excavation. This ran
The throne-room where Biblical character Salome is said to have danced before the kind and demanded the head of John the Baptist has been discovered at the Dead Sea fortress at Machaerus in Jordan, archaeologists report. The excavations are being done by a Hungarian team of experts.
Herod was cruel and sadistic. Not only did he kill all the boys in Bethlehem, according to the Bible, fearing that one of them would be Jesus, the future king who might take his throne from him, but he was responsible for any number of other atrocities. He had several of his own sons killed as well as his wife, according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. He later regretted this, and had her embalmed with honey. He talked to her corpse and is even supposed to have had sex with it. He died of a disease of his lower quarters, which gave him great pain and which doctors have now diagnosed as genital gangrene. However, he was also a great builder, rebuilding Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem as well as a number of other great buildings. He was also an ally of Rome. John the Baptist was imprisoned and bitterly hated by Herod’s wife, because she had originally been married to one of the king’s brothers. She’d left him to run off with the despot, in contravention of Jewish law. John had denounced the two for it, and so been arrested and thrown into prison. The Bible states that Salome was put up to asking for the Baptist’s head by her mother when she danced at a feast held by her father. This impressed him so much, that he offered to grant her anything she wanted. So her mother told her to demand John’s death. Herod was reluctant, but couldn’t back down in front of his guests. And so Christ’s herald was executed.
Mohammad Asfour, Arabic in Three Months: Simplified Language Course (Woodbridge: hugo 1990).
I bought this nearly thirty years ago when I was briefly trying to do a postgraduate degree on Islam in Britain. Hugo are a publisher specialising in languages. According to the blurb and the introduction, this book is written for people, who want to speak the language but don’t want to be able to read or write it. There are a number of different dialects spoken in different countries, but the book states that the standard, written language isn’t used in ordinary verbal communication and it’s very unusual for foreigners to use it. The author is a professor at the University of Jordan, and so the form used is the Jordanian dialect, which will allow the student to converse in ‘almost any Arabic speaking country’.
Along with the chapters taking the reader through the language, there’s also sample conversations and an Arabic-English mini-dictionary in the back. Like many other language books, this also includes written exercises, whose answers are also in the back of the book.
I bought it because I wanted to get an idea of what the language was like before learning the script. That’s almost certainly a mistake, if the spoken and written forms of the language are so different. You almost certainly need to learn the standard language if you also wish to be able read and write it. No language is easy, but some are definitely more difficult than others. Arabic is a Semitic language like Hebrew, Syriac and some of the languages spoken in Ethiopia. They’re very different from the Indo-European languages, like French, German, Welsh, Polish and so on spoken in Europe, and so Arabic is particularly difficult. So much so that I eventually gave up.
I think the book was partly written for tourists to the Middle East, as well as possibly people from the English-speaking world working out there, but not in jobs which require the literary language. I remember one of the words in the vocabulary is ‘funduq’, which I think means ‘hotel’. It’s also a sad reflection of the politics of the region that another word that crops up is ‘inqilab’, which means ‘coup’ or ‘uprising’.
Unfortunately since the attacks of 9/11 and the ensuing chaos of the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, the Syrian and Libyan uprisings and the rise of Islamic State, much of the region is in turmoil and far too dangerous for western tourists, quite apart from the international lockdown everywhere due to the Coronavirus. Still, hopefully peace will return to this fascinating, ancient and historic part of the world, and Europeans will once again to be able to visit it and meet its peoples in peace and friendship.
One of the issues William Blum repeatedly tackled in his books about the crimes of American imperialism was the complete failure of the American political establishment and the general public to understand why their country is so hated by the rest of the world. He produces quote after quote from American politicians, civil servants and senior military officers declaring that America has America’s actions have always been for the good of those nations they’ve attacked, whose politicians they’ve overthrown or assassinated and whose economies they’ve destroyed and plundered. In their opinion, it has always been done by a disinterested America for the benefit of other nations. America has been defending freedom from tyranny and trying to rebuild their economies through free trade capitalism. And American forces have never been responsible for the deliberate targeting of civilians and have been concerned to rebuild the countries afterwards.
Again and again Blum shows that this is all lies. America has overthrown and interfered with democratically elected regimes as well as dictatorships. It has installed vicious fascist dictators, mass murderers and torturers in their place. It has stolen countries’ industries so that they could be acquired by American multinationals. It has hypocritically deliberately targeted civilians, even while denouncing its enemies for doing so. And while it has signed contracts obliging it to pay compensation to the nations it has attacked, like Vietnam and Serbia, these treaties have never been honoured.
But the American state and public have absolutely no idea why America is so hated and resented, particularly in the Muslim world. They’ve set up think tanks to try to work out why this is, and hired public relations companies to find ways of persuading the rest of the world why America is a force for good. In their view, this hatred is due not to America’s vicious imperialism per se, but simply to their mistaken views of it. In 2005 the Smirking Chimp, George W. Bush, sent his Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy on a tour of the Middle East to correct these mistaken impressions. She did not have an easy time of it, particularly in Turkey, where they told her where the people of that country made their views very clear. She told the crowd that sometimes to preserve the peace, America believed war was necessary, and repeated the lie that after the fall of Saddam Hussein, women were being better treated in Iraq. She got angry replies from the women present, to which she responded that this was just a PR problem, just like America had in other places around the world. The Arab News, the leading English-language newspaper of the Arab world, described her performance as ‘Painfully clueless’.
See: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, p. 29.
But some sections of the American political and military establishment have a far better idea of the cause of this hatred. In 1997 a study by the Department of Defense concluded that ‘Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States’.
And former President Jimmy Carter also realised that American military action in Lebanon and the consequent killing of Lebanese civilians had cause the people to hate America. He told the New York Times in an interview in 1989 that
We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the immense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers – women and children and farmers and housewives – in those villages around Beirut…. As a result of that… we became kind of Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.
See Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, pp. 34-5.
General Colin Powell in his memoir discusses the American military actions in Lebanon in 1983. Instead of blaming the terrorist attacks subsequently launched against America on Muslim hatred of western democracy and liberty, he recognised that they were only acting as America would if it were attacked.
‘The U.S.S. New Jersey started hurling 16-nch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would.’ (p. 35).
A 2004 poll by Zogby International of public opinion in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates came to the following conclusion, as reported in the New York Times:
Those polled said their opinions were shaped by U.S. policies, rather than by values or culture. When asked: ‘What is the first thought when you hard “America?” respondents overwhelmingly said: ‘Unfair foreign policy’. And when asked what the United states could do to improve its image in the Arab world, the most frequently provided answers were ‘stop supporting Israel’ and ‘Change your Middle East policy’…. Most Arabs polled said they believe that the Iraq war has caused more terrorism and brought about less democracy, and that the Iraqi people are far worse off today than they were while living under Hussein’s rule. The majority also said that they believe the United States invaded Iraq for oil, to protect Israel and to weaken the Muslim world. (pp. 37-8).
Which is more or less true, as Greg Palast has also shown in his book, Armed Madhouse.
The Defense Sciences Board, which advises the Pentagon, partly confirmed these findings in a report published in November 2004:
“Today we reflexively compare Muslim ‘masses’ to those oppressed under Soviet Rule. This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies-except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends…. Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies…when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy…. [Muslims believe] American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.” (p. 38).
Unfortunately, our government and public opinion shares the same attitude as the American imperialists. This was shown by the full backing of the Iraq invasion and, indeed, the whole neo-Conservative foreign policy by the unindicted war criminal, Tony Blair and the propaganda of the lamestream British media. If you believe Daily Mail hack, Melanie ‘Mad Mel’ Philips, the cause of these attacks is simply Islam. It isn’t. It’s western foreign policy in the Middle East.
If we really want to do something to stop the terrorist attacks on our countries, we could start by stopping bombing, invading and looting other countries around the world, particularly in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, even with the accession of Biden to the presidency, I don’t see that happening any time soon.
The former Soviet Union had a series of legislation defining and punishing economic crimes. As all industry and agriculture was nationalised and the country a single-party totalitarian state, any attempt to disrupt this situation was considered subversive and attack on the Soviet system and state itself. This meant that people could be jailed for organising a strike or industrial dispute, or for simply trying to set up their own, independent private company. This was actually permitted under the Soviet Constitution, but was limited to self-employment. Thus when Gorbachev started glasnost and liberalising the economy in the 1980s, one of the first developments was the rise of private taxis by people with their own cars. Under hardliners like Brezhnev, however, any attempt to set up one’s own company was strictly punished, and the offending entrepreneur sent to the gulags. It was declared to be and punished as sabotage and anti-Soviet activities.
Stalin justified his terror and mass arrests in the 1930s through lies that the Soviet Union and its economic development were under threat from an army of saboteurs. Secret agents and collaborators with the capitalist West, including the followers of his exiled rival, Trotsky, were active causing disaffection with Stalin’s personal rule and plotting to cripple and destroy Soviet industry and agriculture. 30 million Soviet citizens were falsely accused, convicted and either executed or sent to the gulags to die of starvation and overwork.
But now in neoliberal, capitalist Britain, the Tory party really does seem to be trying to sabotage this country’s industry and agriculture. Boris Johnson’s Tory are heavily funded by hedge funds, who are shorting the British economy. They’ve gambled on a no-deal Brexit ruining Britain. And so Boris and his coterie are pushing for precisely that type of exit from the EU. Yesterday the Boorish Bozo and his minions announced that they were going to tear up the deal they’d already agreed with the EU, in order to push for something better. This, as Mike has pointed out, just shows the EU that we can’t be trusted. It’s weakened our position, and made such a disastrous Brexit even more likely. At the same time, it’s been estimated that a third of British farmers could go under in five years thanks to such a Brexit and the probable imposition of agricultural tariffs by the EU.
If Boris and the Tories, or at least his faction, are determined on a no-deal Brexit, because it will destroy British firms and farms, for the enrichment of the hedge funds, then they are guilty of economic sabotage.
In the Soviet Union, they’d be sent to the gulag for it. But as it stands, they’re supported by the British media, and so distort and spread lies blaming everyone but themselves, especially the EU.
I can’t remember where I read it, but one of the commenters on Mike’s blog also suggested that after Boris has done his job and wrecked our once great nation, he’ll take his money and flee abroad.
Which is what any number of truly horrific dictators have done throughout history. I’m thinking of people like Idi Amin, the butcher who ruled Uganda in the 1970s. After he was ousted he fled to Yemen or Jordan or somewhere, where he holed up very comfortably in a luxury hotel.
One of the problems with the developing world is that its dictators and ruling class loot their countries and peoples without putting anything back. They don’t spend the money they’ve stolen consuming any of their nations’ traditional products. They just hoard it abroad in Swiss bank accounts. Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a case in point.
And Boris and the Tories are doing something similar. Which means that what is said about these tyrants can be said about them:
The Tories are kleptocrats trying to turn Britain into a third world country!
If there are people, who count as ‘economic criminals’ who deserve to be thrown into a forced labour camp, it’s them.
This is one of the classics of the graphic novel. Joe Sacco is an American journalist. He spent two months with the Palestinians in late 1991 and early 1992 in Gaza and the West Bank during the time of the first Intifada. He wrote and drew Palestine after his return to the US, basing it on his notes, publishing it as a nine-part comic strip. These were later collected into a single volume to form the graphic novel. The book also has a kind of introduction, ‘Homage to Joe Sacco’, from Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, critic of western imperialism and attitudes to the Arabs, and himself a Palestinian.
This is precisely the type of book the Israel lobby does not want people to read. Not BICOM, not the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which was set up because Gideon Falter, its founder, was worried about British attitudes becoming more hostile to Israel after the blockade of Gaza, not the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion and the companion party to the Israeli Labor Party, not the various ‘Friends of Israel’ societies in the political parties, Tories and Labour, nor the Jewish Leadership Council and definitely not the Board of Deputies of British Jews. All of them shout ‘anti-Semitism’ at anyone who dares to publish anything critical of Israel, or show the barbarity with which it treats the Palestinians.
The book shows Sacco’s experiences as he goes around Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, talking to both Palestinians and Israelis, meeting them, entering their homes, and listening to their stories. He starts the book in Cairo, the beginning of his journey to Israel, and to which he returns at his departure. During his time there, he visits the Vale of Kidron, the Arab quarter of Old Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza strip, as it then was, Balata, another refugee camp on the West Bank, Nablus, the town of Gaza itself, and finally Tel Aviv.
It’s not an easy read. This is an occupied country during deep unrest, and the threat of violence and arbitrary arrest and detention without trial is every where. There are patrols of soldiers, demonstrations, explosions and stone throwing. And he shows, with quotes, the contemptuous, lofty and hostile attitude the early Zionists and Lord Balfour had for the indigenous population. He quotes Balfour as saying
‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land. We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the inhabitants’.
Ben Gurion thought it would be simple to expel the Palestinians, because he felt they had no real attachment to their homeland. He wrote that the Palestinian ‘is equally at ease whether in Jordan, Lebanon or a variety of other places’. With the approach of war, he made it clear their expulsion was going to be through military force: ‘In each attack a decisive blow should be struck, resulting in the destruction of homes and the expulsion of the population.’ When that was done, ‘Palestinian Arabs have only one role – to flee’. He also quotes Golda Meir, who stated that a Palestinian people, defining itself as a Palestinian people, did not exist, and ‘we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They do not exist’. 400 Palestinian villages were razed in the war marking the birth of Israel. Meir’s lie – that the Palestinians don’t exist as a people – is still repeated by Republican and pro-Israel bloggers. Golda Meir was also concerned about the Palestinian population outstripping that of the Israelis, another issue that is still very alive today.
His hosts are polite, welcoming him into their homes, and plying him with tea. But occasionally there is an outburst from one of them, when he’s asked what the point of him being there, of them talking to him, is. Because other journalists have been there too, and they’ve talked to them, and nothing has happened, nothing has changed. They also talk to him about the other factions, and of the peace process. In a separate text at the beginning of the book, he states that, while the peace process set up the Palestinian authority and gave them a government, it changed nothing for ordinary Palestinians, and the occupation and theft of land by the Israelis still goes on.
He also reveals that the Israelis appropriate 2/3 of the land in the West Bank for their own us, which includes the establishment of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. And the governments gives Israelis plenty of incentives to move to them. They’re given a government grant if they do, lower interest rates on loan, the housing itself is cheaper than in Israel, and an income tax rate of 7 per cent. The settlers themselves can be extremely aggressive. Sacco’s hosts tell them about incidents where settlers have come into Palestinian villages, smashing windows and demanding that the owners come out. Of people shot by them, and the trivial sentences given to the settlers guilty of this. They’re given jail sentences of a few months. If they’re convicted in the first place. Palestinians who shoot and kill Israelis are jailed for years. Some lavish homes do exist in Palestine, occupied by Arabs, but most live in very bare houses, often with leaking roofs, which are vulnerable to storms.
His cartoons show what his Palestinian hosts tell him it’s like in prison camps like Ansar III, with crowds of prisoners crammed into small, bare rooms with no heat and poor ventilation. There are also few eating utensils, to the various political factions in the camp – Fateh, Hamas, Popular Front, organise meal times so that everyone gets a turn with the cup and plate to eat and drink. Several of the people he talks to were arrested simply on suspicion. Israeli law allowed them to be held without charge while evidence was compiled, with his captors returning to court over and over again to request a few more days more, until the judge finally listens to their lawyer, has the procedure stopped and the prisoner released. He also shows how the prisoners were tortured through beatings, being forced to stand for hours with bags over their heads, a process permitted under Israel law. A judge ruled that torture could not be used, but what methods were to replace them were kept secret. So many Palestinians have been incarcerated, that a green identity card showing a man has been in jail is a matter of pride. And not to have been to prison correspondingly is a mark of shame.
He talks about how the Israelis have a deliberate policy of not allowing the Palestinians to industrialise, so that they compete with the Israel. The State has also put obstacles in place to prevent Palestinian farmers competing with Israelis. They also deliberately uproot the olive trees many Palestinians grow to support themselves. The Israelis also appropriate most of the water, and dig deeper wells, so that the Palestinians have a much poorer water supply and their own wells are becoming increasingly saline. As a result, unemployment in Gaza was at 40 per cent. And Sacco himself was approached several times by Palestinians, hoping he could do something so that they could leave and go abroad to study or find work.
He describes a school, without electricity, as well as a school for the deaf, which is supported through volunteers and whose staff complain of their lack of training for dealing with people with disabilities. He also hears and illustrates the story of one Palestinian woman, whose son was shot by Israeli soldiers, but was prevented from taking him directly to hospital. Instead she was ordered to go hither and thither, where she was told a helicopter was waiting to take her and the boy. When she gets there, there is no helicopter. She eventually takes him to the hospital herself in a car, by which time it’s too late and the lad dies.
The book also shows the mass of roadblocks and the permit system which Palestinians have to go through to go to Israel. At the same time, Israelis are simply allowed to whiz through in their separate lanes.
Sacco also doesn’t shy away from showing the negative side of Palestine – the anti-Semitism, and particularly infamous murders, like the killing of Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro, and the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team by the terrorist group Black September. This can turn into support for the murder of Israeli civilians. There’s also a chapter on the plight of Palestinian women, This is a society where women are still very much treated as inferiors and subordinates, where honour killings are carried out as the punishment for female adultery. It is also a society where collaborators are murdered, and those, who belong to the wrong faction may also be shot and killed.
The book was written 27 years ago, but nothing really seems to have changed since then. The illegal settlements are still there and expanding. Settlers are still seizing Palestinian homes and property, the apartheid separating Israelis from Palestinians is still in place, unemployment is still high, and Palestinians are still being treated as foreigners, refugees and second-class citizens on their own land.
However, some attitudes are changing. The Israeli liberals Sacco talks to only support the Palestinians up to a point. When pressed, some of them will say that Israel should keep the Occupied Territories, because they seized them in war. Or that they need to keep them for security reasons. But an increasing number of young Jews in America and elsewhere are appalled at the continuing maltreatment of the Palestinians and are becoming increasingly critical and hostile to Israel because of this. And there have also grown up major opposition groups like the human rights organisation B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence in Israel.
The Israeli state and its lobby and supporters in this country and others are increasingly scared. It’s why they’re trying to pass laws to criminalise the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in America, and to outlaw criticism of Israel in this country through tortuous definitions of anti-Semitism that are stretched to include it. It’s why they’re smearing, with the connivance of the right-wing media, the Blairites in the Labour party, and the Conservatives, decent people, who have fought racism and anti-Semitism, as anti-Semites.
Very long, detailed books have been written about Israel’s brutal treatment, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Sacco’s Palestine presenting this as graphic novel, is an example of how comics can also be serious literature, tackling a difficult subject with both narrative and artistic skill and style. I’ve mentioned on this blog before the alternative comics that were also published from the ’60s to the 1980s/1990s on political topics, including the Israeli maltreatment of Palestinians in Pat Mills’ Crisis. Palestine is very much in that tradition, and in 1996 won the American Book Award.
On Saturday Mike also put up a piece reporting how the Jewish Chronicle had taken the opportunity offered by the criticism of Luciana Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, by a member of the local party’s executive to make fresh accusations of anti-Semitism against Momentum and the Labour party.
Berger had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet last year as part of the ‘chicken coup’ of Blairites hoping to weaken to Corbyn’s leadership of the party. Roy Bentham, the local officer, who made the criticisms, said
“Luciana needs to get on board quite quickly now. She will now have to sit round the table with us the next time she wants to vote for bombing in Syria or to pass a no-confidence motion in the leader of the party – she will have to be answerable to us.”
However, as Mike points out in his article, Bentham is not a member of Momentum, which has distanced itself from his comments. Angela Kehoe-Jones, the Secretary of Liverpool Wavertree constituency Labour party, said
The newly elected Executive of Liverpool Wavertree are looking forward to working with our MP Luciana Berger for our constituency.
We must disassociate ourselves from one of our officers who did not speak on behalf of the Executive. The views he has expressed do not in anyway represent the views of the CLP officers.
We have a lively and growing CLP and we have regularly campaigned together in local and national elections and to get Luciana re-elected in the General Election. We are united in our common goal to oust this Tory government and to see a Labour government elected under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
Berger herself has stated that she did not resign from the Cabinet because of anti-Semitism. And while Bentham’s critics, like Owen Jones, have said that his comments were ‘off’, there isn’t actually anything anti-Semitic about them. There was no mention in his comments of Berger’s religion or ethnicity.
Mike speculates that the Chronicle may have been provoked by Bentham’s remark about Berger voting to bomb Syria. But that’s actually fair comment. There’s nothing anti-Semitic in criticising an MP, who wishes to bomb a foreign country for very dubious geopolitical reasons. Likud and the American Neo-Cons want Assad deposed, as do a number of Gulf states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for similar reasons to the Iraq invasion: overthrew a secular, Arab nationalist state allied to Russia and Iran, stop a source of possible aid to the Palestinians, loot the country of its industries and oil reserves, and in the case of the Gulf Arab states and Jordan, send a gas pipeline through the country to Europe and Turkey, which is currently blocked by Assad because of his alliance with the Russians and Iran.
Britain and America are already supporting rebel forces trying to overthrow Assad, and these are very unpleasant indeed. They’re al-Qaeda and ISIS. So we’re cynically supporting the very people we’re supposed to be fighting against in the Middle East, because they’re against a secular dictator the American military-industrial complex also wants to remove.
And it is by no means only Jewish politicos in the Labour party, who voted for the bombing. So was Hillary ‘Bomber’ Benn, the son of Tony Benn.
So, as Mike himself points out, this is yet another baseless accusation of anti-Semitism, like those made against Mike himself in order to prevent him from being elected to Powys council, and for which Mike is pursuing legal action.
These accusations are all the more disgusting, as they detract from the real anti-Semitic abuse Berger suffered from a genuine Nazi, who was jailed for his offences.
Mike quotes one of the commenters on Twitter, EL4JC, who states that the people throwing around these smears undermine the genuine fight against anti-Semitism, and concludes
That is exactly right. Baseless accusations, such as those made against me or Mr Bentham, undermine the fight against anti-Semitism. One wonders why people do it.
Is it to spread division, confusion, disinformation?
In fact, two weeks ago Tony Greenstein put up on his blog an article reporting how the Zionist lobby in the Labour party were going to launch another spate of anti-Semitism accusations after their disappointment with the results of the election. Contrary to their desires, this showed that Corbyn is massively popular with the electorate, a stance that threatens the Blairites’ neoliberal economic agenda and the Zionists’ demands that criticism of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians should be studiously avoided. Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, even wrote to her supporters stating that Theresa May would be better than Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Greenstein commented
The success of Jeremy Corbyn in turning the Tory tide is making these racists sick to the gills which is why they are trying to relaunch the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in the hope of dividing the Party, sowing dissent and providing succour to the Tories. False anti-Semitism and false victimhood are their chosen strategy for defending a state which demolishes Palestinian homes, even of Israel’s own Arab citizens in order to make way for Jewish homes and towns.
In Israel ‘Judification’ is official policy. Google ‘The Koenig Plan’ or the ‘Prawer Plan’. In Nazi Germany they had deJewification campaigns. Israel is a state which officially does its best to stop Jews and Arabs having sexual relationships. A Jewish state means a Jewish Supremacist State. It isn’t a constitutional adornment. Purity of race and a Jewish settler state goes hand in hand. This is what Ryan, Kyle and Newmark are defending.
It is essential that if there is a further round of false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations that Jeremy Corbyn stands firm and calls it out. There is no future in trying to appease the supporters of Israel. You cannot appease racists or the supporters of racism. If Corbyn had, at the very start, said that yes he condemns anti-Semitism and he also condemns false accusations of anti-Semitism directed against supporters of the Palestinians (and even against Jewish anti-Zionists) then he could have defused these attacks early on.
Corbyn above all knows that the ritual response of Zionism’s supporters to opposition to Israel and what it does to the Palestinians has always been false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. They even invented a ‘new anti-Semitism’ since the traditional anti-Semitism (hatred or hostility to Jews) didn’t accord with hatred of racist Israel.
Nothing Corbyn says or does will ever satisfy Israel’s supporters. They are part of the NATO supporting friends of US imperialism. Corbyn will never be acceptable to them which is why the Left in the Labour Party needs to be resolute in opposing any further appeasement of these people. If they think the Labour Party is anti-Semitic then they should clear off and join the Tory Party, the traditional home of genuine anti-Semitism.
In the case of the accusations made by the Jewish Chronicle and other commenters against Bentham and Momentum, this is just nasty, cynical yellow journalism. There’s nothing anti-Semitic in Bentham’s comments, and he wasn’t a member of Momentum. But they made the accusations anyway, and cynically expect the public to believe it. Who knows, perhaps they even believe it themselves? They hope that simply by repeating the smear – the big lie – they’ll get more people to believe it, just as Goebbels, the master of this type of propaganda, recommended.
There’s a very nasty element of race hucksterism here. This is what such accusations are often called in America, whenever a radical Black politician or activist, such as Al Sharpton, gets up and makes an inflammatory comments about White racism. The Republicans, backed by Fox News, immediately fall over themselves to denounce them as a ‘race huckster’ or ‘race baiter’, and try to turn it around so that the politico making the accusations of racism is the one, who is really racist.
And this is what is going on here. The Jewish Chronicle and its allies are simply playing the race card to smear their political opponents, who are genuinely anti-racists, and who include Jews and people of Jewish heritage. It’s about time the Chronicle was still held to the same standards as everyone else. Owen Jones states in one of his Tweets that they should retract their accusations. They should. And Tony Greenstein is also correct in that if they really think that Labour is anti-Semitic, then they should leave and join the Tories, who are, after all, their natural allies if Joan Ryan is to be believed.
One of the points made by Jewish supporters of the Palestinians is that there at more Christian than Jewish Zionists in America. Indeed, Prof. Norman Finkelstein has pointed out that support for Israel amongst Jewish Americans was marginal until the late 1960s, when Conservative activists worked hard to engineer support for the country after its victories against the surrounding Arab nations. Mike made a similar point in his defence of himself and his commenter, Paul Mabbo, against the accusations of anti-Semitism flung by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Not everyone making the accusations was necessarily Jewish.
In fact there has been an alliance between right-wing American Christian groups and militant Zionists since before the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980s. Reagan’s election was partly due to his support from these right-wing Christian groups, brought about by the fundraisers and PR men Richard Viguerie, Terry Dolan, Howard Phillips and Ed McAteer. These men founded, led or advised a slew of conservative Christian organisations such as Conservative Caucus, Religious Roundtable, National Conservative Political Action Committee, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Christian Voice, Young Americans for Freedom and the Moral Majority. The term ‘Moral Majority’ was coined by either Weyrich or Phillips when McAteer arranged for them to meet Jerry Falwell. McAteer was then the head of the Christian Freedom Foundation, which was funded by money from the Pew and DeVos families, who owned Sunoco and AmWay respectively. It isn’t surprising that Betsy DeVos has now popped up as Trump’s Education Secretary, with a militant right-wing plan to privatise all American public schools into Charter Schools with an explicitly right-wing Christian curriculum. Weyrich was also a member of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which was financed by money from the Coors and Richard Scaiffe. As well as being a member of Young Americans for Freedom, Phillips had also been a minor member of Nixon’s administration. They chose Falwell because he had helped Anita Bryant defeat the Dade County Gays Rights Bill in 1977.
Falwell was one of the most notorious of the right-wing televangelists of the 1980s. He was actually the least popular of them, became the most influential through his contacts with Ronald Reagan. He first came to public attention for his 1965 speech denouncing Martin Luther King. However, it was the series of rallies he conducted in 1976 and ’77 which brought him to the attention of the leaders of the American Christian right. In 1983 Reagan allowed Fallwell to attend National Security briefings on the possibility of nuclear war with Russia, and discussed theology and nuclear war with him in his presidential limousine. Fallwell was also active establishing links with the Israeli leadership to the point where he became the most influential gentile lobbyist for Israel and Israeli expansionism.
As part of this, Falwell began arranging tours to the Holy Land. One of these was attended by a journalist, Grace Halsell, in 1983. She noted the prominent role apocalypticism played in the tours, with many of her fellow tourists believing that Christ’s return, and the end of the world were imminent. These tours also had an explicit agenda in drumming up support for Israel. The Israeli guide referred to Palestinians as Arabs, following the official Israeli line set by Golda Meir that there were no Palestinians. He then went on to state that the ‘Arabs’ preferred to live in poverty, had repeatedly refused Israeli friendship and bluntly stated that ‘all Muslims were terrorists’. When the tour bus stopped at Nazareth, it was only to use the toilets there. Halsell suspected that they were being prevented from speaking to any Palestinians or Christians living in Israel. This is not unlikely. One of the ministers at our church said that if you go to Israel, you will be kept from meeting Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. The tour finally met Falwell at a hotel in Jerusalem, where they were treated to a speech by the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Arens, boast about Israeli victories in the invasion of Lebanon.
Falwell was richly rewarded by the Israelis for his services to them. A forest was named after him, he was showered with free trips to the country, and was also given a private jet by the Israeli government. He became the only gentile to receive the Jabotinsky medal, named after the Zionist leader, who advocated waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians in order to set up an Israeli empire that straddled both sides of the Jordan. It was Falwell who turned Jesse Helms, another prominent Reaganite, from a militant anti-Zionist into an enthusiastic supporter of Israel.
Falwell also visited the West Bank, where he had his photo taken with a Jewish American family, who had recently immigrated there. He set up a convention in Annapolis in 1983 to organise support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This was attended by James Watt and Richard Allen, two members of Reagan’s administration; Yehuda Hellman and other Jewish leaders; Viguerie, Phillips and Weyrich; and former presidential sleazebag Richard M. Nixon. Falwell also told a Texan newspaper that same year that Israel had a divine mandate, through the covenant between the Lord and the patriarch Abraham, to parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan, and that the whole of Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait should also belong to Israel. This would have to be achieved through force. Falwell stated that ‘good intentions are acts of stupidity’.
Extremist American Christian groups have also given support to Jewish terrorists, such as Gush Emunim, who have attempted to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem in order to restore Solomon’s Temple, whose site they believe the mosque occupies. In 1984 18 members of the terrorist group were convicted of trying to blow up the mosque, with the covert support of the Shin Bet and other members of the Israeli army and police. The group also attacked three Palestinian mayor, wounding them.
The terrorists were received as popular heroes in Israel, including by the judge who sentenced them. There were pleas for mercy from Yitzhak Shamir, and American right-wing Christians and Jews began sending money to finance their defence. Wealth American Jews also fund Gush Emunim and Meir Kahane’s extreme right-wing Kach party. Gush Emunim is also funded by Marcus Katz, a Mexican arms salesman, who made immense profits from selling guns and other armaments to Iran and various South American countries. Ruben Mattus, the head of the ice cream firm Haagen-Dazs, is one of the major backers of Kahane’s Kach party in Israel and his Jewish Defence League in the US.
The foremost Christian supporter of Israeli terrorism, at least in the 1980s, was the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, headed by the self-declared new Nehemiah, Terry Reisenhoover. Reisenhoover’s an Oklahoma speculator in oil and land, and styles himself after the Biblical Nehemiah, who was the first governor of Jerusalem after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon. The land Reisenhoover has speculated on, along with his Israeli partner, Shony Braun, includes land taken from Palestinians on the West Bank. Reisenhoover appointed as secretary Stanley Goldfoot, once implicated in the Stern gang’s 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Temple Foundation aimed to raise $100 million annually to rebuild the Temple and establish a yeshiva to teach the future priests the correct way to sacrifice animals there. They also supplied funds to Gush Emunim’s defence lawyers after the 1983 attack.
Another right-wing Christian group funding Israeli terrorism is the International Christian Embassy, who lobbied their governments to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This group were also financed by South Africa.
Last week there came a report that Assad’s government had attacked its own people, using poison gas. About 60 people had died. After the Syrian president and his government had been condemned for this atrocity, Trump declared that he was not tolerating it and launched a missile attack in reprisal at a Syrian air force base. And the world came one step closer yet again to World War III. Or at least another bloody western invasion of a middle eastern country.
We are being told that such attacks are to defend the Syrian people from a murderous regime. Our governments are also supplying funding, training and arms to a plethora of rebel groups fighting Assad. These are Islamist groups, such as the al-Nusra Front, who are basically the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, we are being assured that these rebels are moderates, who want to create a democratic Syria.
This is all lies. The so-called moderates are no such thing, and the weapons and funding that’s given to them sooner or later gets passed on to their more extreme allies. This includes ISIS, who is also being funded by part of the American military complex. The bland reassurances that this proxy war is being fought to establish democracy is also bogus. The Neocons have been itching to remove Assad since the early days of the century, because he’s an ally of Russia and Iran. And the real reason for the determined campaign to have him removed is because of his opposition to an oil pipeline that would pass from Saudi Arabia, through Qatar, Jordan and Syria, into Turkey and thence into Europe. Assad objects to this as it would damage another pipeline his Russian allies wish to build from Central Asia.
This is not about democracy. This is about the right of massive oil companies and American corporations to butcher and loot another country and its people in the name of big profits, just like they butchered and looted Iraq.
And looked at closely, the chemical weapon attack supposedly launched by Assad in the week starts to look like nothing of the sort. Instead, there is a good evidence that it was deliberately set up by al-Nusra to draw America and the West into the war on their side. The alleged victims of the attack may instead have been people al-Nusra murdered after they kidnapped them from two pro-government towns
The Syrian rebels have previous form on this, as does the American government. In this video below, the American comedian Jimmy Dore reads and comments on the sceptical reports about a similar gas attack four years ago in 2013. The first piece he analyses is by the respected American journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh describes how members of the intelligence services he talked to were frustrated by Obama’s decision that Assad was responsible for the attack, and that he had overstepped the line. They made it clear to Hersh that there was absolutely no evidence that the attack had been launched by Assad. They also informed him that he had altered the timing of the intelligence reports, so that it appeared that the analysis was occurring at the same time as the attacks. This reminded Hersh of the Gulf of Tonkin affair. This was the notorious ‘false flag’ incident which provided the pretext for the Americans to begin bombing North Vietnam right at the beginning of the Vietnam War.
Obama then retreated from his threat to bomb Syria, after Assad offered to relinquish his chemical weapons. Hersh notes that if this was done, then the only people in Syria to possess them would be the rebels – al-Qaeda and its allies. Obama’s sudden volte-face also suggested to Dore that Obama had received convincing information that Assad was not responsible.
He then cites another report, which was reprinted from Counterpunch. Two delegates from the Republican People’s Party, CHP, in the Turkish parliament, Erdem and Seker, had come forward and stated that the gas attack had been staged by the Turkish intelligence services in order to provoke America into entering the war on the rebels’ side.
In this second video, Dore moves on to commenting on this past week’s poison gas attack. He notes how the EU’s High Representative, Federica Mogherini, had declared that it had been launched by Assad even though this claim could not be independently verified. Furthermore, the photograph of the al-Nusra affiliated White Helmets handling the bodies of the victims is highly suspicious. The dead were supposed to have been killed by Sarin nerve gas. The first effects of the gas is to make the victims lose control of their bowels and bladders and begin vomiting. It is so toxic that protective clothing needs to be worn even when handling the victims. Yet the White Helmets were shown using their bare hands, without protective gloves, and with only gas masks for protection. Attacks using this gas kill thousands of people.
Dore also quotes a number of Tweets from people, who smell a rat about the doctor claiming that his hospital was being inundated by the victims of the assault. The doctor was Tweeting and texting this information, and even offering to provide a video about it later. They point out how suspicious it is that he has time to blog about this supposed crisis. Dore also notes that the doctor himself is hardly a trustworthy source. The doctor, Shajul Islam, was ‘disbarred’ in London for ‘semi-terrorism’ actions, according to Dore.
Dore also reports that last week, 250 people from Majdul and Khattab were kidnapped by al-Qaeda terrorists. Local people have said that many of the dead were the terrorists’ kidnapped victims.
The photograph of the location of the attack also looks suspicious. The buildings are carved directly into the rock. This doesn’t look like the area, where the attacks were alleged to have occurred so much as one particular al-Qaeda base. Further evidence that this has all been set up is provided by the opposition television service, Orient TV. This announced that Russian and Syrian planes had launched a gas attack hours before the attack actually happened. Dore also makes the point that, for the attack, the timing of the attack is nonsensical. Assad and the Russians are actually winning. It would therefore be foolish for them to jeopardise their gains through a completely unnecessary gas attack, whose result would only be to strengthen international opposition against them. This is especially true now, on the eve of a conference on Syria in Brussels, and a week before peace negotiations are due to begin. The report on which Dore is commenting states that this looks like another false-flag operation, similar to the 2013 Khan al-Assal attack.
Other cogent observations came from social media. One woman, Partisangirl, asked why the White Helmets would receive Sarin suits only a month before the attack, when Syria did not have any Sarin? Charles Shoebridge, who had been a Scotland Yard detective, counter-terrorism intelligence officer and international politics graduate and lawyer, pointedly observed that the attack had made Trump’s change in attitude towards Assad apparent to the attack’s beneficiaries. By which he meant the various rebel terrorist groups. Dore plays Trump’s response, mocking the hypocrisy behind the president’s outrage that little babies have been killed, when America and its allies have done the same in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the Middle East. Dore also asks if the corporatist Democrats and their shills, like Rachel Maddow, are also happy. They’ve got the war they wanted, a war which will also lead to military confrontation with Russia, because Russian troops are also on Syrian bases. Responding to Mr Shoebridge, Peter Ford, the former British ambassador to Syria, reminds his viewers on Sky that Trump had repudiated Obama’s policy of wanting to unseat Assad. His administration was much more eager to tackle ISIS. Ford states that if the Syrian terrorist groups wanted to prevent Trump’s policy becoming more sensible, ‘they could not have done better than to create a piece of fake news like this.’
Dore makes the point that this information is not going to appear on the mainstream news. And the propaganda effect of the attack is working. He reads out Tweets from people, who are now convinced that America needs to enter the war, as well as from those, who are pointing out how stupid and insane this policy is.
Dore ends the vide with an appeal to his viewers to help fund them through Patreon, as YouTube and its advertisers will demonetise this and other videos. He states that he knew this video would be demonetised even before he began filming it, but he’s doing it anyway because it’s an issue he wants to continue covering. He states that his show is being hit, just like all the other news shows.
Yesterday I put up a piece about American hypocrisy in the allegations that Putin was blackmailing Donald Trump, when the Americans themselves interfered in the Russian elections in 1996 in order to secure Boris Yeltsin’s election as Russian president. This was, however, hardly the first time America had intervened in the domestic politics of a foreign country. William Blum devotes two chapters to this in his book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. In one he lists the various interventions America has made in other countries, including invasions and military coups, and in the other cases where America has interfered with the conduct of elections in order to secure a win for their favoured candidates.
Both of these are very long and ignominious lists. Here’s part 1 of a list of foreign interventions by the US.
American Interventions
China 1945-51
Aiding Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang against Mao’s Communists.
France 1947
Backing French Socialist party against the Communists, using Corsican mobsters to attack Communist party and Communist-aligned trade unionists.
Marshall Islands 1946-58
Indigenous people of Bikini Atoll removed from the island in order to make way for nuclear tests.
Italy 1947-1970s
Backing Conservative Christian Democrats to keep the Socialists and Communists out of power.
Greece 1947-9
Backing neo-Fascists and creating intelligence unit for them in the civil war against the Communists.
Philippines 1945-53
Military actions against the left-wing Huk forces.
Korea 1945-53
Korean War. However, afterwards US backed Conservatives, who had collaborated with the Japanese, and Fascist dictators, also committed atrocities against fleeing civilians.
Albania 1949-53
Backing anti-Communist guerillas, most of whom were collaborators with the Nazis and Italian Fascists.
Eastern Europe 1948-1956
Head of CIA Allen Dulles deliberately heightened paranoia in the eastern bloc, causing hundreds of thousands of imprisonments, purge trials and murders by the Communist regimes.
Germany 1950s
Lengthy campaign of terrorism, dirty tricks and sabotage against East Germany.
Iran 1953
Prime Minister Mossadegh overthrown by CIA and British led coup, as dared nationalise what is now British Petroleum oilfields.
Guatemala 1953-1990s
CIA backed Fascist coup against democratic socialist Jacobo Arbenz for nationalising plantations owned by American company, United Fruit. Result: forty years of terror, with 200,000 people murdered.
Costa Rica mid-1950s and 1970-1
Attempted assassination of liberal democratic president, Jose Figueres, because considered too soft on the left, and for making his nation the first in Central America to establish diplomatic links with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and questioning American foreign policy, like the invasion of Cuba.
Middle East 1956-58
Attempts to overthrow the Syrian government, shows of force in Mediterranean against opposition to US-backed governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landing of 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and attempts to overthrow and assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Nasser.
Indonesia 1957-8
Attempts to manipulate elections, assassinate, blackmail and start a civil war to overthrow President Sukarno. Sukarno neutral in Cold War, went on trips to China and USSR, nationalised private property of Dutch colonialists, and did not crack down on the Communist party, which was then engaged on electoral path to power.
Haiti 1959
Trained troops of notorious dicator Papa Doc Duvalier, and destroy attempted coup against him by Haitians, Cubans and other Latin Americans.
Western Europe 1950s-1960s
Granting of American money through charities and so on to various groups and organisations in pursuit of American anti-Communist, anti-Socialist policies.
British Guiana/Guyana 1953-64
Attempts to force out of office democratically elected socialist premier, Cheddi Jagan by America and Britain.
Iraq 1958-63
Long campaign against nationalist leader General Abdul Karim Kassem after he overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. USA and Turkey drew up plan to invade; this dropped in favour of arming Kurds, as well as assassination attempts. Kassem helped set up OPEC and created nationalised oil company. Kassem was finally overthrown in a Ba’ath coup, which also led to a clampdown on the Communist party, which was backed by both America and Britain.
Soviet Union 1940s-1960s
Cold War campaigns of espionage, propaganda and sabotage, backing of resistance movements against USSR.
Vietnam 1945-73
Vietnam War.
Cambodia 1945-73
Overthrow of Prince Sihanouk enabling Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge to gain power.
Laos 1957-73
Armed insurrection and bombing against reformist left, led by Pathet Lao party.
Thailand 1965-73
Armed forced against insurgents.
Ecuador 1960-63
Overthrow of president Jose Maria Velasco for not clamping down on left and not following US policy against Cuba.
Congo/Zaire, 1960-65, 1977-8
Overthrow of Patrice Lumumba in favour of dictator and mass-murderer Mobutu Sese Seko.
France/Algeria 1960s
Backed French military coup in Algeria to stop country becoming independent. Also hoped repercussions would overthrow De Gaulle, who was blocking American attempts to dominate NATO.
Brazil, 1961-64
Backed military dictatorship which overthrew President Joao Goulart for being too independent and friendly towards Communists, despite the fact that Goulart millionaire devout Roman Catholic.
Peru 1965
Military action against leftist guerillas
Dominican Republic 1963-5
Overthrow of liberal president, Juan Bosch.
Cuba 1959-Present
Attempts to overthrow Communist regime.
Indonesia 1965
Overthrow of Sukarno and bloody suppression of Communists by successor, General Suharto.
Ghana 1966
Overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah
Uruguay 1969-72
Dirty War against Tupamaro leftists guerillas.
Chile 1964-73
Long campaign against democratic Communist, Salvador Allende, culminating in Fascist coup of General Pinochet.
Greece 1967-74
Intervention against liberal Greek president George Papandreou, as he wanted to take Greece out of NATO and declare Greek neutrality in Cold War. Overthrown in the Fascist coup that inaugurated the rule of the Colonels.
South Africa 1960s-1980s
Assistance to South African apartheid government against African Nationalist Congress, which, amongst other things, led to the arrest and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela.
Bolivia 1964-75
Military campaign against President Victor Paz for supporting Cuba.
Australia 1972-5
Operations to have Gough Whitlam, the leader of the Aussie Labor party, removed by America and British, ’cause he was opposed to Vietnam.
Iraq 1972-5
CIA backed Kurds, not for them to get autonomy, but to distract Iraqi army and make sure they didn’t overthrow the Shah of Iran.
Portugal 1974-76
comprehensive series of measures, including shows of force by NATO warships, against radical policies proposed by the army officers, who overthrew the previous Fascist dictatorship of General Salazar.
East Timor 1975-99
Backing of Indonesian invasion, which killed 1/3 of the island’s population.
Angola 1975-1980s
Angolan civil war, which was basically proxy war between US, China and South Africa on one hand and USSR and Cuba on the other.
This is another stupid move by Trump, in which ideology is shown to weigh more in his mind than military experience and expertise. In this clip from the David Pakman Show, Pakman and his team discuss Trump’s reorganisation of the National Security Council. This is the top government organ for discussing issues of national security and foreign policy. Trump has just made Steve Bannon, the White supremacist head of the right-wing news agency, Breitbart, a permanent member. By contrast, the head of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence will only attend when issues directly relevant to them are being discussed.
Pakman and his team point out that Bannon doesn’t have any experience in national security. He was a naval officer, before becoming a documentary film-maker and then head of Breitbart. They also question how Trump has the authority to make these changes, as the legislation governing the composition of the council states that the president appoints its personnel with the advice and consent of the senate.
They also point out that this is part of Trump’s war on intelligence, which the orange buffoon insists doesn’t exist. Trump claims that the story that he is at odds with the espionage agencies is a falsehood created by the press. In fact, he is just against certain leaders, but values the work of the junior staff. Pakman and his team point out that Trump’s apparent downgrading of senior members of the Council – the head of the joint chiefs and national intelligence director, would send a signal to the junior members of those organisations that Trump definitely does not value them.
This looks like pretty much the same stupid manoeuvre George Dubya made with his selection of the top senior officers commanding the ‘war on terror’. One of the Conservative critics of Bush and the Neocons, a senior female officer connected to the Pentagon, was a fierce critic of Shrub’s maladministration of the wars in the Middle East. Shrub and the Neocons valued adherence to the ideological ‘party line’ far more than practical military experience, tactical knowledge and knowledge of the region. The upper ranks of the organisation handling the invasion of Iraq was overwhelmingly staffed by Bush’s fellow Neocons at the expense of experienced, knowledgeable military officers. Bush selected for membership of the commanding organisations personnel, who told him exactly what he wanted to hear. And he wanted to hear that the war would be over very quickly, and that the liar and fantasist, Ahmed Chalebi, would be welcomed back to Iraq as a national hero by a people grateful to the Americans for their liberation from Saddam Hussein.
Those officers, who told Bush the opposite were sacked. Shrub dismissed General Zilli, one of the senior officers in the section of the Pentagon dealing with the Middle East, because Zilli told him – rightly – that any invasion of Iraq would result in years of more war. This didn’t fit the Neocon view of the Middle East, and so Zilli lost his job. Despite being 100 per cent right.
Now Trump is doing exactly the same. He’s shown he values ideological adherence over military and foreign policy experience and knowledge. This is made worse by Bannon’s own White supremacist views. Well, contrary to whatever stupid, racist nonsense Trump and Bannon believe, the peoples of the Middle East are not stupid or less intelligent than Americans or Westerners. Nor can the resistance to the western occupation be put down simply to some kind of innate evil within the Middle Eastern psychology, or to their supposed envy of the political and personal freedoms enjoyed by the peoples of the West.
For many of the peoples of Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, opposition to America and her allies doesn’t necessarily come from Islam. It comes from the fact that we’ve invaded their countries, and are killing their compatriots and coreligionists, and members of their families – through bombings and drone strikes. Yes, ISIS and its backers in the Saudi government are responsible for much of the terrorism and resistance to the West in the region. But other causes are simply the natural urge of ordinary people the world over to hate and resist invaders. But this vital point is going to be missed with Trump’s appointment of Bannon to this important position. If, of course, Trump ever seriously considered it at all.
I’m afraid that the result of this will be more senseless war, just as Shrub’s valuing of Neocon political views over genuine military and cultural understanding has meant that the allied occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has lasted over a decade. It will lead to more needless civilian deaths, and even more of our servicemen and -women losing their lives, for no good reason. These wars haven’t been launched to build democracy in the Middle East. Bush launched them in order steal Iraq’s oil and its state industries after they were privatised. Syria is being bombed for much the same reason – to ensure the passage of an oil pipeline for the profit of the oil companies and countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, which Assad does not want passing through his country.
Bannon’s appointment as a permanent member of the National Security Council will make this debacle worse, and prolong further a war that has already gone on for far too long.
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