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In
earlier chapters we have seen the US power elite supporting Nazis before WWII
(Part
5), during the war (Part
7), and immediately after (Part
1 and Part 6). About these policies, there is a
controversy. Some—the
New York Times and the Washington Post, for example (Part
6)—prefer the instrumental
hypothesis, according to which US support for Nazis was a ‘necessary
evil,’ a temporary expedient in the ‘good fight’ against Soviet communism.
Others prefer the ideological hypothesis:
US bosses supported Nazis for the sake of Nazism. To
settle this controversy, we need a diagnostic geopolitical test. That
would be a place where the instrumental
hypothesis predicted zero pro-Nazi policies whereas the ideological hypotheses required
them. In such a place, we would have merely to look, and then whatever US policies we found there would tell us
which is the better hypothesis. Is
there such a place? Yes: Israel.
Why
Israel? Two reasons. First,
I can show (below) that at least since the mid-1970s the Soviets supported
the most important US policy initiatives in Israel, so these latter carried
no instrumental anti-Soviet advantage. Second,
it is ungrammatical—in fact, quite beyond the pale—for ideological opponents of Nazism to help Nazis
against (of all things) the Jewish State, whereas ideological
supporters of Nazism must do this—it’s
the entire game. Thus,
for the case of Israel, we predict: ●
on
the instrumental hypothesis: zero pro-Nazi US policies; ●
on
the ideological hypothesis: extreme pro-Nazi US policies. Perhaps
you think we are done. After all, isn’t the United States Israel’s best—or
only—ally? Yes, some argue that Obama has taken a sharp turn against Israel,
but this is a recent deviation from the traditional pro-Israel pattern.
Doesn’t everybody know that? Slow
it down. Why does everybody ‘know’ that? Where do they get it from? From the
mainstream news and the established universities. But those are the same
institutions that US powerbrokers, in the postwar, sought clandestinely to
control in order to manipulate the citizenry (Part
1). We should therefore investigate, rather than simply accept,
any geopolitical ‘commonsense.’ Perhaps
US policy has indeed been pro-Israel. But perhaps the structure of Western
political grammar (Part 2) forces US bosses to stamp a ‘kosher’
seal on their policy, obscuring their true, anti-Israel goals. To find out,
we need a closer look. I’ll
go straight to the most important, long-term, US policy objective in Israel:
the creation of a state (called a ‘Palestinian State’) for PLO/Fatah (now called the ‘Palestinian
Authority’) in Judea & Samaria (or ‘the West Bank’) and Gaza. After an
agreement negotiated in Oslo, this is often called the Oslo Peace Process.
This is a powerful name! Merely to invoke the process is to make
the—grammatically—obligatory claim: that it’s meant to bring peace.
This
‘peace process’ could get underway only because PLO/Fatah’s international prestige rose while Israel’s plummeted, allowing
US bosses to bully Israelis into doing the formerly taboo: negotiate with
PLO/Fatah. Thus, I will consider
this question first: ●
Did
US bosses engineer Israel’s and PLO/Fatah’s
prestige reversals? Then
I examine the following two: ●
Did
the Soviet politburo agree with US efforts to create a PLO/Fatah state? ●
Was
the US push for a PLO/Fatah state
in any way pro-Nazi? The
answer to each of these questions, I will defend below, is ‘yes.’ If I have
succeeded, the instrumental hypothesis
is in serious trouble. Did US
bosses engineer Israel’s and PLO/Fatah’s
prestige reversals? Emerging
victorious (again) in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel made impressive
territorial gains against its combined Muslim enemies. The Muslim bosses,
faced with this stunning defeat, had to question whether frontal assaults
would easily conclude the “war
of extermination” that Azzam Pasha—secretary general of the Arab
League—had promised in the first such attempt, the War of 1948.[1] An idea was born: attack Israel’s symbolic flank instead. Wound
her prestige. But
how?
Those
born after the mid-1970s may find this shocking, but in the 1960s Israel was
still widely admired. It was ‘David,’ the tiny but plucky haven for Holocaust
survivors, bravely repelling the genocidal attacks of coalitions of fascist
Muslim states, each larger than Israel—‘Goliath.’[2] But perhaps this could be turned
around? What if ‘David’ were made into ‘Goliath’? Couldn’t that recruit
Western political grammar against
Israel? And wouldn’t that soften her for a future Muslim blow? Perhaps. The
Muslim bosses might apply the following recipe. First,
clamor a bit less for genocide, and forsake—for a bit—conventional military
attacks. Push instead for ‘justice for the Palestinians.’ Voilŕ: a new ‘David.’ Blame Israel—and
only Israel—for the Palestinian plight. Voilŕ:
‘Goliath.’ The sympathies of Westerners might then be reversed. Next,
impose PLO/Fatah, a murderer of Palestinian Arabs, as
their sole representative, and promise the Jews ‘peace’ in exchange for land.
With enough pressure from the ‘international community,’ this might bring
PLO/Fatah—the ‘Trojan Horse,’ as
senior PLO official Faisal Husseini called it [3]—into the disputed territories of
Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Then, with the hapless Palestinians for cannon
fodder, destroy Israel. The US military, at least, had reason to think this could
work; a 1967 Pentagon study had concluded that, if the disputed territories
ever fell to the enemy, Israel would be in a fatally vulnerable strategic
position.[4]
But PLO/Fatah, eager
to destroy Israel, had little patience for a long wait, and were tough to
convince. As late as 1969 they were still publicly opposing the new idea.[5] Yet, when the Muslim states lost again in the 1973 Yom Kippur
War, the terrorists saw the light and adopted the new strategy in their 1974
‘Plan of Phases,’ “according to which the Palestine Liberation Organization
[PLO/Fatah] would acquire whatever
territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing
its ultimate goal of Israel’s annihilation.”[6] Most
Western citizens never heard about this, because the media—as I can show—didn’t
report it.[7] That’s one reason the ‘Plan of
Phases’ has worked. But not the only one. US
bosses also assiduously protected PLO/Fatah’s “pretense of moderation”—as secret
State Department documents called it—even
though PLO/Fatah
terrorists had just murdered US diplomats.[8] Finally,
the ‘Plan of Phases’ required that Western political grammar be expertly
wielded as a weapon of psychological
(or political) warfare. PLO/Fatah
couldn’t do that. But Western politicians, journalists, and academics—so long
as they could be made to act as a unified machine (see Part 1)—could. How? Consider,
first, the political grammar of Western ‘leftists’ (Part 2).
It is: 1)
nationalist: those jointly labeled a ‘people’ or
‘nation’ have a sacred right to their own state; and 2)
post-colonial: Westerners must expiate a
guilt-burden for the problems of the ‘Third World’ they once ruled as
colonial imperialists. If Western politicians, journalists, and academics were to
shed rivers of crocodile tears over the ‘destitute’ and ‘oppressed’
‘Palestinian natives,’ whose ‘national aspirations’ were denied by the
‘Zionist colonial empire’; if they portrayed PLO/Fatah as the legitimate ‘government in exile’ of a ‘suffering’
‘people,’ wanting only a piece of land to call its own; and if they recast
PLO/Fatah—these murderers of men,
women, and children (many of them Palestinian!)—as born-again ‘doves’ eager
to negotiate in ‘good faith,’ then a critical mass of Western ‘leftists’
would take the bait and help agitate for a ‘Palestinian State.’ This was done.
In November of 1974, just five months after the ‘Plan of
Phases’ was inked, United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim invited
PLO/Fatah’s Yasser Arafat to speak
at the UN General Assembly, and “accorded [him] protocol honors of chief of
state.”[9] In the same month, UN General
Assembly Resolution 3236 was approved, granting PLO/Fatah ‘observer status’ in the United Nations.[10] The grammatical implication—delivered with all the crushing
weight of UN authority—was that PLO/Fatah
was a ‘government in exile.’ The next
year, 1975, again under Kurt Waldheim’s watchful gaze, UN resolution 3379
declared Zionism—the ambition to protect the Jews in a national state in
their ancestral homeland—as equal to racism.[11] The grammatical
implication? Israel was no longer the refuge for the persecuted, the plucky
underdog, the democratic hero that humbles genocidal Arab bullies; now it was
the ‘oppressive Zionist empire’ stifling ‘dispossessed natives’ under its
‘colonial’ boot. She was compared to apartheid South Africa!
Support for Israel was ‘politically correct’ in the United
States, so US officials were careful to express public displeasure at these
UN developments. But grammatically obligatory public symbolism is meaningless
(Part
2). Here’s what’s meaningful: Kurt Waldheim, author of these
stunning Orwellian inversions, owed his top UN job to (rather insistent) US lobbying.[12]
And Waldheim could scarcely risk anything grammatically so bold—and entirely
without precedent!—as to induct a terrorist
organization into the UN if his US patrons did not approve. Support for
the Palestinian terrorists was, by contrast, ‘politically incorrect,’ so the US government
signed a 1975 treaty with Israel forbidding US contact with PLO/Fatah. It was broken at once: in
secret, writes the NYT, “the Central Intelligence Agency” kept open “a little
publicized, so-called ‘back-channel’ line of communications with PLO
headquarters in Beirut.”[13] ‘Back channel’? A senior US intelligence official explained to
PBS that, before the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, PLO/Fatah “ ‘had been the protectors for the
American diplomatic community in Beirut… There was liaison with the PLO, and
the Americans were depending on them for their security.’ ”[14] This was no ‘back-channel’; it was a face-to-face, intimate,
high-level relationship. This easily explains the harmonious dance of US and
PLO/Fatah policy positions. In 1977, US
President Jimmy Carter declared his support for a ‘Palestinian homeland’ in
the ‘West Bank’ (as he was careful to call it) and Gaza.[15] This was followed, two
weeks later, by PLO/Fatah’s endorsement: “PLO
spokesman Mahmoud Labady says PLO views Pres Carter’s concept of Palestinian
homeland as important contribution to ‘just and durable’ peace in Middle
East… Says PLO would agree to establishment of Palestinian state
on West Bank and in Gaza Strip…”[16] Right around this time, Arab media reported that Carter
administration officials and PLO/Fatah
were “involved in secret high-level contacts,”[17] and
a week later that Carter was
instructing PLO/Fatah to claim
‘government in exile’ status so they could be invited to the proposed
Geneva Peace Conference.[18] Another week, and Carter was
pressuring Israeli leaders to accept two Arab pre-conditions for that conference:
1) commit to relinquish the territories gained in the 1967 war; and 2) commit
to the formation of a ‘Palestinian State.’[19]
Carter’s dramatic 1977 efforts on behalf of PLO/Fatah, of course, did not happen in a
political vacuum; Bruno Kreisky—who, for his labors, “earned the respect and
praise of every US presidential administration from Kennedy to Reagan”[20]—had already lain the groundwork. As Austrian chancellor and leader of the international left
throughout the 1970s, Bruno Kreisky publicly defended PLO/Fatah and denounced Israel with equal
passion. In 1977, right as Carter was making his own moves, he had the
Socialist International, of which he was vice-president, publish a report
blaming all problems in the Middle East on Israel.[21]
This reinforced the new David and Goliath story, especially among ‘leftists’
(those who—grammatically—speak for the oppressed), and gave cover to both
Carter and Waldheim. “Unlike ten years ago,” a Palestinian told Newsweek in June of that year, “we now
have the sympathy of the entire world.”[22]
Yes, it was working.
Into this new climate, in 1978, with strong tailwinds now
favoring the diplomacy necessary for the ‘Plan of Phases,’ sailed English
professor Edward Said. From his perch at Columbia University he founded, with
his book Orientalism, what is known
as ‘post-colonial studies,’ and thus engineered a profound academic and
cultural shift. Though still called a ‘Palestinian’—despite having had to
correct this in his autobiography (after others refuted his claims to a
Jerusalem upbringing plus exile by the Jews)—Said in fact hailed from a supremely
wealthy, Protestant, English-speaking
circle, in Cairo. His mother could
converse in Arabic, which was exceptional, confessed Said, since “she alone
of the entire social group to which we belonged knew the language well.”[23] But he did belong to the Palestinian National Council (PNC),
the governing body of the terrorist PLO/Fatah.
Was that embarrassing? Not to the Western media, whose plaudits turned Said
into “ ‘arguably the most influential intellectual
of our time’ ” (The Guardian).[24] The media bosses, like modern engineers doing their will with
a river, had reversed the natural flow of prestige: as they made Said ‘cool,’
his colleagues, the PLO/Fatah
terrorists, also became ‘cool.’ Said followed Orientalism
with The Question of Palestine
(1979). As he became required reading across the humanities and social
sciences, an entire generation of Western students learned that “Israel was…
built on the ruins of… Arab Palestine,”[25] and
came to see the Arab-Israeli conflict as black and white—or rather, to use
Said’s racist terms, ‘colored’ and ‘white.’ On one corner of the ring was
Israel, the ‘white’ ‘European’ ‘colonial imperialist’; on the other was PLO/Fatah, fighting to ‘liberate’ the
‘colored’ ‘natives’ from ‘occupation.’ Was this fair? Consider the following list of historical facts
(commonly omitted, denied, or papered over in both media and Academia): 1)
Jews,
historically the most persecuted victims of ‘white’ European colonialists and
imperialists, came to Israel fleeing genocide. 2)
The
Zionists didn’t steal; they bought their land, paying dearly to willing
landowners.[26] 3)
Thanks
to the Zionist economic boom, many local ‘colored’ Arabs—most of whom came from elsewhere (though we call them all
‘Palestinians’)—escaped the clutches of their feudal lords.[27] 4)
The
Arab lords would have their revenge: without asking the Palestinians, they rejected a ‘Palestinian state’ (which the Zionist Jews had
accepted!) and then tried their best, in the War of 1948, to exterminate the
Israeli Jews.[28] 5)
Hajj
Amin al Husseini, the leader of those feudal lords, later created PLO/Fatah; this organization—oppressor of common Palestinians—is the one
that Western leftists have seen fit to support![29] 6)
After
the War of 1948, the Muslim states expelled the ‘colored’ Jews of North
Africa and Western Asia; Israel took so many of them that a majority of Israeli Jews are every bit
as ‘colored’ as the Palestinians.[30] 7)
After
1948, Jordan and Egypt illegally occupied the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza. They did not allow Palestinian
self-determination. Here and elsewhere, displaced Palestinians were
denied integration and called ‘refugees,’ to be used as political weapons
against Israel. 8)
So
long as Jordan and Egypt had the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, PLO/Fatah denied—in its very
constitution!—that these lands were ‘Palestinian.’ When they were lost to
Israel in the next attempt to exterminate the Jews (1967), PLO/Fatah suddenly ‘discovered’ they were ‘Palestinian,’ after all.[31] But no matter. Western students were hungry to expiate
colonial guilt with a redemptive pat on the back from their new ‘Palestinian
savior,’ whom the media extolled. How could they mentally resist? They
couldn’t. They accepted Said’s simple ‘New Left’ gospel: the ‘Palestinians’
are always right. That gospel protected PLO/Fatah’s growing prestige, come what may. For example, in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini established a
terrorist regime in Iran, after a
violent coup engineered by none other
than Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas (see also Part
0).[32] Did this become a problem for PLO/Fatah? Not at all. The US
asked PLO/Fatah to ‘mediate’
with the new regime, further raising their international
prestige.[33]
In Teheran to celebrate with a thankful Khomeini, Arafat announced
with his host the coming genocidal destruction of Israel, while Abbas laid
out to traveling Arab reporters how it would be done. The Jews were suckers
for an offer of peace, he explained, so PLO/Fatah would offer that. Many Jews—including many Israelis—would
then join the Western bleeding hearts, producing internal divisions in Israel
that would impair her ability to defend herself. Then, having gained
territory through negotiations, they would—with the help of Iran—destroy the
‘Zionist entity.’[34] A
simple con: terrorists never became doves. But Western citizens never heard
Abbas’s Teheran confessions, for neither the media nor Western politicians
exposed them. What
the media did report was Kreisky’s
tour-de-force propaganda of the same year, when he invited both Willy Brandt,
German chancellor and president of the Socialist International, and Yasser
Arafat, the PLO/Fatah chief, to a
Vienna Israel-bashing fest. The three “issued a joint communiqué blasting
Israel.” And for good measure, Kreisky likened PLO/Fatah’s fight against Israel with
European resistance to the Nazis.[35] War is peace. Freedom is slavery. The
Jews are the Nazis. Orwellian
inversion: complete. (And
mission accomplished: David was now Goliath.)
Jimmy
Carter’s successors—including Ronald Reagan [36]—would
keep pushing. It would take just another decade, plus grotesquely biased
Western media coverage of the ‘First Intifada,’[37] to
complete the wrecking of Israel’s prestige. This would allow US bosses to
bully Israelis onto the Madrid Conference platform and board them on the
train to Oslo—and a PLO/Fatah state. Conclusion: the US power elite, directly and
through various assets, indeed engineered Israel’s loss of international
prestige. QED. We
may now address the remaining two questions. Did the Soviet politburo agree with US efforts to
create a PLO/Fatah state? In
the context of Carter’s Geneva Conference diplomacy, the “Joint U.S.-Soviet
statement on the Middle East,” published 1st October 1977, declared the
shared position of the superpowers. They were agreed. This document called
for “the
resolution of the Palestinian question,” and for the presence of
“representatives of all parties involved in the conflict, including those of
the Palestinian people.”[38]
Since
the Arab bosses were all saying that only PLO/Fatah could represent the Palestinians, journalists sought
clarification from President Carter. Did this mean that the PLO/Fatah terrorists could have a seat at
the negotiating table? Carter replied: “If they accept UN 242 and the right
of Israel to exist, then we will begin discussions with the leaders of the
PLO.”[39] PLO/Fatah—then as always—was required
merely to say certain things in public. It is singular to find the two superpowers in such close
agreement in this particular speck of the world, given that elsewhere they
were bitter geopolitical antagonists, but I must emphasize that it was
nothing new for the Soviets to support PLO/Fatah. They had long been patrons of these terrorists. And the Soviets never wavered. Jump to 1991, when Bush Sr.’s administration threatened
Israeli leaders with the loss of US economic and military support if they did
not attend the Madrid Peace Conference of the same year, which became the
platform for the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process leading to a PLO/Fatah state. That conference was co-sponsored by the United
States and the Soviet Union.[40] An
objection of last resort could be that this really was (somehow) an anti-Soviet policy, except that Soviet rulers
were not smart enough to see it. But then the policy should have withered after
the USSR vanished. Just the opposite happened: it was precisely as the USSR
was falling apart in 1991 that the US pushed ever more stridently for PLO/Fatah’s entry into Judea & Samaria
and Gaza—with actual threats directed at Israel.[41]
As the US cemented itself as the world’s only superpower, this stridency rose
to fever pitch. Conclusion: Given that 1) the Soviet communists
were always agreed with the most important US policy with regard to Israel: the
push to create a PLO/Fatah State; and
given that 2) the US pushed for this even harder after the Soviet Union
disappeared, it follows that this policy carried no instrumental anti-Soviet
advantage. QED. Was the US
push for a PLO/Fatah state in any
way pro-Nazi? ‘Nazi’
is not meant as a careless insult. I am asking—quite literally—whether the
promotion of PLO/Fatah has been a
way to advance the aims of the German
Nazi movement that fought World War II and sought to exterminate the
Jewish people. To
answer ‘yes’ I must establish a historical and ideological link between PLO/Fatah and the German Nazis. Can this
be done? It can. We
might begin with the two Austrian statesmen so favored by the US power elite,
Bruno Kreisky and Kurt Waldheim, who labored hard to lift PLO/Fatah’s prestige and ruin that of
Israel. Immediately
after WWII, Kreisky had “ ‘worked
day and night to obtain the release and favored treatment for former members
of the [Nazi] German Wehrmacht,
even Waffen-SS.’ ” In
what became an international scandal, Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal showed
that Friedrich Peter, with whom Kreisky had allied in order to become prime
minister, had been a sergeant in an Einsatzgruppen
brigade with innocent Jewish blood on its hands. Later Wiesenthal showed
that several members of Kreisky’s cabinet were also Nazis. In
the middle of these public controversies, Kreisky launched into a public
apologetics for Austrian participation in the Third Reich, refused to pay
compensation to Nazi victims, and refused to investigate Austrian citizens
who were senior Nazis.[42] One of those Austrians was Kurt Waldheim. A few years after Waldheim, as UN secretary general, had greased the diplomatic wheels for PLO/Fatah by giving it the status of ‘government in exile,’ it came to light that Waldheim had a Nazi past (see here).[43] Waldheim’s
fondness for PLO/Fatah, it turns
out, may have had something to do with his Nazi past. Waldheim had been
stationed in Yugoslavia, where the Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al Husseini had
helped organize SS massacres. In
fact, Husseini was a very big Nazi. Before
the war, as ‘Grand Mufti’ of Jerusalem, he had led several massive terrorist
attacks against Jewish civilians in British Mandate Palestine. The largest of
these, the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1936-39, used weapons sent by Adolf Hitler.[44]
When
WWII broke out, Husseini traveled to Berlin and, at a meeting with Hitler in
the fall of 1941, they agreed to work together to exterminate the Jews
living in the Middle East.[45] But
Husseini’s genocidal ambitions were larger. He stayed in the Nazi sphere
during the entire war, becoming a high-ranking Nazi official with his own
bureaucracy (Buro des Grossmufti), and organized Bosnian and Albanian
Muslims into SS Divisions that participated in the Yugoslav chapter of the
Holocaust, massacring Serbian, Jewish, and Roma (Gypsy) civilians. He also
played an important role in Nazi radio propaganda, inciting murder of Jews.[46] But
there is more. Though Adolf Eichmann is more famous as architect of the Final Solution, Eichmann’s own right-hand man, Dieter Wisliceny, testified at Nuremberg that Husseini had been an equal partner and co-administrator of the entire death-camp system.[47]
After
the war, Husseini took refuge in Cairo. In the 1950s, several important German Nazis arrived in Cairo to enjoy Gamal Abdel Nasser’s protection and train his security forces and army for a genocidal war against Israel. These Nazis were part of the Gehlen Org, a postwar network set up—under US protection—by top Nazi Reinhard Gehlen (see Part 6). Husseini
made sure that his colleagues gave Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and a few
other adolescent founders of Fatah the
best German Nazi training, that he might finally consummate, through them, what he and
Hitler had pledged themselves to in 1941: the extermination of the Jews in
what is now Israel.[48]
A bit
later, Fatah would swallow the PLO
and take its name. Thus was born PLO/Fatah,
now better known as the ‘Palestinian Authority’ after US diplomacy forced it
inside Israel. Conclusion: The most important US policy with
regard to Israel—the push to create a PLO/Fatah
State—has been pro-Nazi. QED. We may
now move to our general conclusion. Israel,
as the Jewish state, and a place where the superpowers coordinated their
policy, is a diagnostic geopolitical case, such that: a)
the
instrumental hypothesis requires absence of pro-Nazi US policies; and b)
the
ideological hypothesis requires presence of pro-Nazi US policies. We
now have our diagnosis: the most important US policies toward Israel have had
an extreme pro-Nazi bias; And
we may conclude, more generally for this series, that US policies favorable
toward the Nazis have been ideologically driven. US bosses want Nazism. QED.
Nazism
caused a world war, over 60 million
deaths, and the slavery of countless more. Obviously, it is a danger to us
all. But Nazism, as we see here once again, seems to have a very special
mission to destroy utterly the Jewish
people. An obvious question is: Why?
More generally: Why are war-mongering, oppressive, totalitarian power elites
always so hell-bent on attacking the Jews? We
turn to this next.
[1] Barnett, D., & Karsh, E. 2011. Azzam’s
Genocidal Threat. Middle East Quarterly, 18(4): 85-88. [2] Leon Uris’s novel Exodus—“the best-selling novel in America since Gone With the Wind,”
followed by its own smash-hit film adaptation—taught the 1960s West to love
the Holocaust survivors who, against all odds, had made themselves a free
home in their ancestral land of Bible yore. Israel was much admired back
then, and reactions to the 1967 Six Day War in the media at the time largely
reflect that. [3]
“...Faisal Husseini, the top PLO official in Jerusalem...[was] quoted as
likening the Oslo accords to a ‘Trojan horse.’ ...the weekly Al-Arabi quotes
Husseini as calling the Oslo accords ‘just a temporary procedure, or just a
step towards something bigger…the liberation of all historical Palestine from
the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea, even if this means that the
conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.’” SOURCE:
The Baltimore Sun, July 11, 2001 Wednesday,
FINAL EDITION, Pg. 1A, 1574
words, Israelis taking darker view of
Palestinian intentions; Many see existence of Jewish state at risk, Mark
Matthews [4] This Pentagon document was apparently
declassified in 1979 but not published until 1984 in the Journal of Palestine
Studies: "Memorandum
for the Secretary of Defense"; Journal of Palestine Studies,
Vol. 13, No. 2. (Winter, 1984), pp. 122-126. It is
also published as an appendix in: Netanyahu,
B. 2000. A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations, 2 edition.
New York: Warner Books. (APPENDIX: The Pentagon Plan, June 29, 1967;
pp.433-437) It
said: “From
a strictly military point of view Israel would require the retention of some
captured Arab territory in order to provide militarily defensible borders.” This
study was quite specific, explaining that Israel needed to hold most of the
West Bank because, “This
border area [along the Jordanian West Bank] has traditionally been lightly
held by military forces and defenses consist[ing] mainly of small, widely
separated outposts and patrols and, therefore, afforded an area where
launching of saboteurs and terrorists into Israel was relatively easy...” On
the Syrian border, “Israel
must hold the commanding terrain east of the boundary of 4 June 1967 which
overlooks the Galilee area.” This is
a reference to the Golan Heights, from which the Syrians had earlier been
shelling Israeli farmers in the Galilee. The Pentagon notes: “During
the period January 1965 to February 1967, a total of 28 sabotage and
terrorist acts occurred along this border.” Concerning
Jerusalem, the Pentagon study states that “To
defend the Jerusalem area would require that the boundary of Israel be
positioned to the east of the city to provide for the organization of an
adequate defensive position.” And
about the Gaza strip, the Pentagon study states that, “The
Strip, under Egyptian control, provides a salient into Israel a little less
than 30 miles long and from four to eight miles wide. It has served as a
training area for the Palestine Liberation Army... Occupation of the Strip by
Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five and eliminate a
source for raids and training of the Palestine Liberation Army.” [5] “… recent rejection by Al Fatah
representative of all plans to establish Palestinian state on Jordan West
Bank and in Gaza Strip noted; Palestinian National Council member Dr S
Dabbagh urges commandos to prepare now for strategy they will follow if Arab
states accept political settlement.” SOURCE:
The New York Times Company: Abstracts; Information Bank Abstracts; New York
Times; March 14, 1969, Friday; Section: Page 8, Column 1; Length: 119 Words;
Journal-Code: Nyt [6] The quote is from: Levin,
K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH:
Smith and Kraus. (p.ix) Levin’s
interpretation is the generally accepted one. It is easily shown to be
correct. Article
15 of the 1968 PLO Charter says that the PLO means to “liquidate the
Zionist…presence” (“liquidate” is the kind of language that the German Nazis
used), and article 9 explains that “armed struggle is the only way to
liberate Palestine” (my emphasis).(a) In
the 1974 ‘Plan of Phases’ a new policy was allowed. The 1974 document says
that “armed struggle” was still “first and foremost” among the methods, but
other methods could now be used as well. To what end? Any territory
“liberated” by whatever means, explains the Plan of Phases, will be governed
by a “Palestinian national authority,” and “the
Palestinian national authority will strive to achieve... the aim of
completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory.” (our emphasis) Given
the definition of ‘Palestine’ employed in the PLO’s 1968 Charter, the words
“all Palestinian territory” are synonymous with all of Israel. But,
naturally, Israelis would not simply give up their entire Jewish State in a
negotiation. The implication is therefore obvious: once a strategic position
is obtained through negotiation, the “Palestinian national authority”—the
name PLO/Fatah now goes by in Judea and Samaria—will use it as a platform and
will deploy “armed struggle” to destroy Israel. SOURCES
IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a) Translation: The
Associated Press, December 15, 1998, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News,
1070 words, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Arafat, appeals for progress, By
TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent, EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip.
(emphasis added) Article
9…says that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.” Article
15 says it is “a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist invasion
from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from
Palestine.” Article
22 declares that “the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the Zionist and
imperialist presence and bring about the stabilization of peace in the Middle
East.” [7] I can show this with a simple search
in the Lexis-Nexis Academic database, which archives a huge number of the
most important Western newspapers. In
the media, the ‘Plan of Phases’ has also been called the “phased policy,” the
“phased program,” and the “phased plan,” and its authorship is attributed to
the PLO or, with greater precision, to Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian National
Council (PNC), PLO/Fatah’s governing body. I did
a Boolean search in this database looking for articles with the terms “plan
of phases,” or “phased policy,” or “phased program,” or “phased plan,” and
“PLO” or “PNC” in the period going from 1974, when the ‘Plan of Phases’ was
first formulated, until 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed. Grand
total: 9 results. This
is near, total, absolute silence on PLO/Fatah’s ‘Plan of Phases.’ But
to leave it at that would be, in fact, to overstate the results. For none of them
are older than 1985. And they consist, in any case, of 1) letters to the
editor by Israeli officials; 2) editorials by Israeli officials (prominently,
Netanyahu); and 3) mention, in passing, of statements by Israeli officials
(prominently, Netanyahu). The very few Westerners who even noticed
these—almost nonexistent—mentions of PLO/Fatah’s ‘Plan of Phases’ would
likely dismiss them as “Israeli propaganda.” And
yet PLO/Fatah leaders, when expressing themselves before Arab audiences, were
doing so without ambiguity. Consider: [Excerpt
from the New York Times begins here] To
Western audiences, the P.L.O. portrays the Algiers resolution of the
Palestine National Council as a renunciation of terrorism and the recognition
of Israel's right to exist. But
speaking to the Arab world, in the pages of Al Siyasa, a Kuwaiti newspaper,
Abu Iyad, the P.L.O.'s second in command, explained it this way: “We
swore that we would liberate even pre-'67 Palestine. We shall liberate
Palestine stage by stage . . . The borders of our state as we declared it
represent only part of our national aspirations. We will work to expand them
in order to realize our aspirations for all the land of Palestine. . .” Two
weeks later, on December 21st, he declared in the same publication: “If
the P.L.O. succeeds in establishing a state in the West Bank and Gaza, it
would not prevent the continuation of the struggle until the liberation of
all of Palestine is achieved…” George
Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who
participated in the Palestinian National Council and approved its
resolutions, said last Jan. 31: “We
believe that the international and Arab circumstances do not enable us to
reach more than the establishment of a state on part of Palestine . . . We
see in this move the beginning of the end to the Zionist Entity. We
see in the Zionist Entity a racist, fascist entity with which we cannot live
in peace . . . There is no doubt that the Zionist Entity will be destroyed
one day.” Obviously,
the P.L.O. has not abandoned its plan for the destruction of Israel by
stages. It also has not renounced terrorism but continues to employ it, both
in its attempts to silence any Palestinian who opposes its directives and in
its persistent attempts to infiltrate Israel’s border with Lebanon - six
times, in fact, since the P.L.O. supposedly renounced terrorism. Moreover,
the P.L.O. still adheres to its original covenant of 1964, which considers
Israel's existence ‘null and void.’ ” [Excerpt
from the New York Times ends here] SOURCE:
The P.L.O.'s Forked Tongue; The New York Times, March 15, 1989, Wednesday,
Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 27, Column 1; Editorial Desk, 633
words, By Johanan Bein; Johanan Bein is the acting permanent representative
of Israel to the United Nations. [8] PLO
murders US diplomats; US State Department protects...the PLO!;
Historical and Investigative Research; 6 January 2007; by Francisco Gil-White [9] “ABSTRACT: Palestine Liberation Orgn
(PLO) leader Yasir Arafat is accorded protocal honors of chief of state Nov
13 by UN General Assembly. Does not
sit in chair of chief of state proferred him by Assembly Pres Abdelaziz
Bouteflika, but stands with one hand on it as delegates applaud his
speech. Honor for Arafat reflects
growing influence of third world countries in UN decisions. US Mission spokesman says US UN Amb John A
Scali was not pleased by decision to treat Arafat as chief of state. Arafat holds audience like chief of state
after his speech to Assembly.
Jordanians join line of delegates to congratulate him, although they
have been persuaded reluctantly by other Arab countries to forfeit claims to
west bank of Jordan River for creation of Palestinian state. Arafat is guest of honor at reception given
by Egyptian UN delegate Ahmed Esmat Abdel Meguid. Later, Arafat is seen
leaving Waldorf Towers for unknown destination (M).” SOURCE:
The New York Times Company: Abstracts; Information Bank Abstracts; NEW YORK
TIMES; November 14, 1974, Thursday; SECTION: Page 25, Column 7; LENGTH: 157
words; BYLINE: BY RAYMOND H ANDERSON. [10] United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 3236 | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[Consulted 1 September 2014] [11] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Consulted 1 September 2014] [12] The future CIA director and future US
president George Bush Sr. was, in 1971, the US delegate at the UN. Here is
what he said: “George
Bush, the American [UN] delegate, issued a statement saying that Mr. Waldheim
was ‘ideally equipped’ for the job [of UN Secretary General].”(a) The
US pushed for his reelection. And they were so happy with him that they even
backed Waldheim for an unprecedented third term (which Waldheim did not win).
The following is from an Associated Press wire written at the time when the
UN was deliberating either reelection for Waldheim, or the election of a
successor. “Breaking
her silence on U.S. support for Waldheim last week, [U.S. Ambassador] Mrs.
[Jeane J.] Kirkpatrick told reporters that she and Soviet Ambassador Oleg A.
Troyanovsky had agreed that the Austrian incumbent was ‘the kind of
nonpartisan person’ both their governments could ‘get a fair shake from.’ The
Americans regard Waldheim as an exponent of Western parliamentary democracy.
To the Soviets, he is a known quantity from a small European state that has
pledged since the end of World War II to remain neutral in international
affairs.” (b) SOURCES
IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a) SECURITY COUNCIL NAMES WALDHEIM TO
SUCCEED THANT, BY HENRY TANNER; Special to The New York Times; New York Times
1857-Current; Dec 22, 1971; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times
(1851 - 2001); pg. 1 (b) The Associated Press, November 21, 1981,
Saturday, AM cycle, International News, 1144 words, The Race for U.N.
Secretary-General, By O.C. DOELLING, Associated Press Writer, UNITED NATIONS [13] A NYT article from 1981 mentions the
1975 agreement and states: “In fact,
however, the Central Intelligence Agency has for several years maintained and
occasionally used a little publicized, so-called ‘back-channel’ line of
communications with P.L.O. headquarters in Beirut.” The
term “several years” typically refers to more than three. Thus, the CIA had
been using this ‘back channel’ at least 4 or 5 years. Since the NYT article
that reports this is from 1981, this means that the treaty with Israel was
never honored. SOURCE:
The New York Times, May 17, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 6;
Page 77, Column 3; Magazine Desk, 11464 words, "Putting The Hostages'
Lives First" [14] Vincent Cannistraro
was “Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went
on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and
to lead the CIA’s investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103...” SOURCE:
PBS-FRONTLINE
interview with Vincent Cannistraro. [15] “[Congress] watches, with a mixture
of admiration and doubt, Jimmy Carter’s efforts to reassure the Israelis
while trying to get them back to the pre-1967 borders with a new Palestinian
‘homeland’ on their flank.” SOURCE:
The Policy Of Confusion, By James Reston; New York Times (1857-Current file);
May 13, 1977; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 -
2001); pg. 20 [16] New York Times; May 17, 1977,
Tuesday; Section: Page 5, Column 1; Length: 106 Words; Byline: By Marvine
Howe; Journal-Code: Nyt; Abstract [17] “Beirut newspaper Al Anwar repts
Carter Adm and Palestinian guerrilla leaders are involved in secret
high-level contacts. Cites June 24 meeting between William W Scranton,
reptdly representing Carter, and PLO repr Basil Akl, London. Says exch began in May with note from PLO
head Yasir Arafat delivered to Carter by Saudi Prince Fahd. Note reptdly
outlined Arafat's views on PLO role in Arab-Israeli Geneva peace talks and on
Palestinian state and peace treaties with Israel (S).” SOURCE:
New York Times; July 20, 1977, Wednesday; Section: Page 8, Column 3; Length:
81 Words; Journal-Code: Nyt; Abstract: [18] “Reports in the state-controlled
Egyptian news media said the Americans were suggesting that the Palestinians
form a government in exile as one way of making themselves eligible for [the]
Geneva [peace conference]. The argument, the reports said, was that the
Palestine Liberation Organization can not now be invited because it does not
represent a state.” (my emphasis) SOURCE:
The Associated Press, August 2, 1977, AM cycle, 911 words, By BARRY SCHWEID,
Associated Press Writer, ALEXANDRIA, Egypt [19] “Bernard Gwertzman
writes disagreements over Middle East peace strategy might provoke
confrontation between US and Israeli leaders.
Notes Sec of State Vance agrees with Arab nations that principles for
peace settlement should be agreed upon before convening Geneva conf. Describes Israeli desire to start conf
without any pre-conditions. Observes
US is anxious over Israeli refusal to accept 2 Arab pre-conditions to conf,
including relinquishment of most of the territory occupied since '67 war and
acknowledgement of right for existence of some kind of Palestinian
state. Remarks if Israelis continue to
refuse to make commitments before conf, Pres Carter has said he would
publicly issue peace plan. Notes
Carter's view that Israeli Prime Min Begin will not risk open confrontation
with US if plan seems equitable to Israeli population and narrowly-based pol
coalition (M).” SOURCE:
The New York Times Company: Abstracts; Information Bank Abstracts; New York
Times; August 8, 1977, Monday; Section: Page 1, Column 4; Length: 147 Words;
Byline: By Bernard Gwertzman; Journal-Code:
Nyt; Abstract: [20] SOURCE: Berg, M. P. 2000. Foreword to
the English Edition. In M. P. Berg, J. Lewis, & O. Rathkolb (Eds.), The
Struggle for a Democratic Austria. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
(p.xiii). [21] Muravchik, J. 2014. Making David into
Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. New York: Encounter Books.
(p.93) [22] Newsweek, June 13, 1977, UNITED
STATES EDITION, INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 55, 849 words, The West Bank Today, Milan
J. Kubic [23] Said’s father, a protestant who
called himself William, emigrated to the US, served in World War I, became a
US citizen, then settled in Cairo, where he made a fortune, and married
Hilda, another protestant. They begat Edward, named after the British King
Edward VIII (an infamous admirer of the German Nazis and Adolf Hitler). Said
grew up surrounded by servants. “He
and his four siblings—Rosemary, Grace, Jean, and Joyce—were reared in the
church and in opulence, with a box at the opera, membership in country clubs,
piano lessons, and education entirely at British and American primary and
secondary schools in Cairo. Said felt ‘proud of my mother for conversing in
Arabic, since she alone of the entire social group to which we belonged knew
the language well.’ ” Said
presented himself as an ‘exile’ who had left Jerusalem, where he had been
born and raised, “until forced from there at age twelve by the Jews.” The
truth was that, “until
he moved to the United States to attend prep school in 1951 and never left,
Said had resided his entire life in Cairo, not Palestine.” A few
months after Justus Reid Weiner demonstrated this, Said published his
autobiography, confirming Weiner’s findings. But he nevertheless attacked
Weiner. Said’s supporters, “styling
themselves The Arab-Jewish Peace Group, cosigned a letter to the editor that
likened Weiner’s article to ‘deny[ing] the Holocaust’ ” SOURCE:
Muravchik, J. 2014. Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against
Israel. New York: Encounter Books. (pp. 101-03) [24] Quoted in: Muravchik, J. 2014. Making
David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. New York: Encounter
Books. (pp. 99-100) [25] Said, E. 1980. The Question of
Palestine. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (p.13) [26] Nathan Weinstock, a historian whose
sympathies certainly ran against Zionism when he wrote Zionism: False
Messiah, writes that “the Zionists certainly paid dearly for their Holy
Land.” That’s because they didn’t steal it. Weinstock discusses the effects of
“the high prices sales, which brought a fortune to the usurious, parasitic
effendi class…,” which is to say the feudal landowning Arab aristocrats, who
were quite eager to sell their unproductive lands to the Zionists. SOURCE:
Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. (p.156) For
an extensive discussion of this issue, see: “Did the
Zionist Jews take something away from the Arabs in British Mandate
‘Palestine’?”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT;
Historical and Investigative Research; 02 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White [27] There are two issues here: 1)
the
benefits that, thanks to Zionist immigration, accrued to the Arab poor in
British Mandate Palestine; and 2)
the
provenance of most so-called ‘Palestinian Arabs.’ On
the first, consult the section subtitled “The Zionist Jews were much nicer to
the Arab poor than the Arab ruling elite,” in: “Did the
Zionist Jews take something away from the Arabs in British Mandate
‘Palestine’?”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT;
Historical and Investigative Research; 02 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White On
the second, consult the section subtitled “Who are the ‘Palestinians’” in: “Was
there, in British Mandate Palestine, a ‘nationally conscious’ ‘Palestinian
Arab people’?”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT;
Historical and Investigative Research; 30 April 2006; by Francisco Gil-White [28] One major pillar of the anti-Zionist
narrative is that the Zionist Jews impeded the creation of a Palestinian
national state. In fact, the Palestinians were offered two states, and the
Zionists impeded neither. The
Palestinians got their first state when the territory of ‘Transjordan,’ which
had been included in the original Mandate as part of the land intended for a
Jewish state, was separated from British ‘Palestine.’ This later became the
Kingdom of Jordan. It is a Palestinian state. But
even so, the Palestinians were offered a second state. Many people today
believe that the UN vote of 1947 was to create a Jewish state in the Middle
East. They are mistaken. The vote was to partition rump British
‘Palestine’—only 1/4 of the original territory, after lopping off
‘Transjordan’—and create two states: one Jewish, the other, Arab Palestinian.
With this second partition of ‘Palestine,’ the land for a Jewish state was
reduced to about 10% of what the League of Nations had originally promised
for a Jewish homeland. But the Zionist Jews said yes. They said yes to a
second Palestinian state—so long as they could have a small piece of
territory to call their own. It
was the Palestinian Arab aristocrats—and the power elites in the Arab
world—who said no. They said they preferred to exterminate the Israeli Jews
rather than have a second Palestinian Arab state. Azzam
Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League (a British creation), promised:
“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be
spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” (a) In addressing the UN Security
Council in April 1948, Jamal Husseini, Hajj Amin's cousin and spokesperson
for his Arab Higher Committee, straightforwardly and proudly admitted that
this was a war of aggression: “The representative of the Jewish Agency told
us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the
fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to
fight.” (b) Hajj Amin himself
issued a fatwa (legal Islamic pronouncement) to murder all the Jews that had
survived his Nazi Final Solution: “I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers!
Murder the Jews! Murder them all!” (c) SOURCES
IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a) Barnett, D., & Karsh, E. 2011. Azzam’s
Genocidal Threat. Middle East Quarterly, 18(4): 85-88. (b) Security Council Official Records, S/Agenda/58, (April
16, 1948), p. 19 (c) Leonard J. Davis and M. Decter (eds.). Myths and Facts
1982; a Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Washington DC: near east
report, 1982), p. 199 [29] Consult the section titled: “Hajj
Amin al Husseini, leader of the ‘Palestinian movement,’ becomes an architect
of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and then continues the extermination effort
beyond the World War, helping create Al Fatah, the controlling core of the
PLO.” in: “How did
the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German
Nazis, and the US”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT;
Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-Whit [30] The
Wikipedia page (consulted 2016/06/11) on the
Jewish exodus from Arab lands states that “The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries or Jewish
exodus from Arab countries was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation
and migration, of 850,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background,
from Arab and Muslim countries, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s. They and their descendants make up the
majority of Israeli Jews.” Notice, above, that the exodus is described with two
categories of words (no doubt the result of a fierce Wikipedia editing
battle). One category, which includes “flight” and “expulsion,” is consistent
with saying that these Jews were chased
out. The other category, which includes, “departure,” “evacuation,” and
“migration” does not imply that. Further below, Wikipedia states: “The reasons for the exodus included push factors, such as
persecution, antisemitism, political instability, poverty, and expulsion,
together with pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings
or find a better economic status and a secure home in Europe or the Americas.
The history of the exodus has been politicized, given its proposed relevance
to the historical narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict. When presenting the
history, those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948
Palestinian exodus generally emphasize the push factors and consider those
who left as refugees, while those who do not, emphasize the pull factors and
consider them willing immigrants.” Wikipedia writes as though presenting either view—that is, favoring the “push” vs. the “pull,” or
vice-versa, is to “politicize” the Jewish exodus. Perhaps. The more pertinent
question, however, is which “politicized” view is in better harmony with
historically documented facts, for proper historical science is not
‘politically balanced’—it is merely accurate. It seems especially relevant that the exodus began in 1948.
Why? Because the year before, when the UN voted to partition British Mandate
Palestine to create a Jewish and an Arab state, the power elites in the Arab
League, a coalition of Arab Muslim states, expressed their universal
displeasure with the vote. Any
Jewish state, as they made very clear, was to them unacceptable. Was this antisemitism? In the same year of 1947, the states of the Arab League
imposed a series of laws on all Jews
living in any Arab State. The
overwhelming majority of these Jews were not even Zionists—but no matter. These laws were so draconian that they were compared to the
Nazi Nuremberg Laws against the German Jews. A New York Times headline exclaimed: JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM LANDS; By MALLORY BROWNE; Special to THE
NEW YORK TIMES; New York Times; May 16, 1948; pg. E4 (more on this here) Even as that NYT article was being published, the states of
the Arab League launched what Arab League Secretary General Azzam Pasha
publicly announced as a “war
of extermination” against the Jews in the newly founded State of
Israel. Following the Arab defeat, the Arab states imposed punitive
restrictions on the Jews and began confiscating their property. Many were
ordered to leave. Would it be to “politicize” the issue to say that basically
all Jews living in the Arab world left because they feared for their lives? [31]
See the section subtitled “The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) denies that
‘Palestine’ exists!” In: “Was there, in British Mandate Palestine, a ‘nationally
conscious’ ‘Palestinian Arab people’?”; from UNDERSTANDING THE
PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical and
Investigative Research; 30 April 2006; by Francisco Gil-White [32] “PLO/Fatah and Iran: The
Special Relationship”; Historical
and Investigative Research; 25 May 2010; by Francisco Gil-White [33] “GRAND
THEATER: THE US, THE PLO, AND THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI: Why did the
US government, in 1979, delegate to the PLO the task of negotiating the
safety of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran?”; Historical and Investigative Research;
10 Dec 2005; by Francisco Gil-White [34] In
a 1999 article republished in the most important Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, the journalist Saleh Qallab
recalled that: “Abu Mazen lectured at length on this issue in Tehran to a
group of Palestinian and Arab journalists, accompanying Palestinian President
Arafat, when he went to congratulate Khomeini for the triumph of the Iranian
revolution. It was in February 1979, a week after Khomeini’s return from
exile in France. …All that is required
from us is to bring the Israelis to the absolute conviction that we Arabs
really want peace, because such conviction will deepen the dispute in
Israeli society and bring the Israelis down from their tanks and out of their
fortresses.” Soften and divide the Israelis with talk of peace, then kill them
- this is the strategy. What is the remaining obstacle? “…This mission is not easy, because the Israeli right knows
the truth… The Arabs, however, must
give this phase a chance. They must convince the majority of Israelis
that they… want a just peace based on what can be referred to as a historic
settlement, on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.” SOURCE: “Arab Peace Strategy and the Fragmentation of Israeli
Society”; MEMRI; July 21,
1999; No.40. For
an analysis of the above: [35] Muravchik,
J. 2014. Making David into Goliath: How
the World Turned Against Israel. New York: Encounter Books. (pp.92-94) [36] It
is obvious that both George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton strongly pushed for a
PLO/Fatah State in Judea & Samaria
and Gaza, but some of my readers may think that Ronald Reagan had a different
policy. He did not. After certain policy moves that led many of Reagan’s supporters
to wonder if he was not an antisemite, “…The
White House adviser…said Reagan assured his Jewish supporters that ‘the only
path to peace we’re following is the Camp David process,’ and not either
peace initiatives proposed by Saudi Arabia or Europeans. So
Reagan, first, endorsed a Saudi ‘peace’ plan that called for the
establishment of a Palestinian state “with its capital in East Jerusalem,”
and which didn’t recognize Israel’s actual existence, let alone recognize its
right to exist. SOURCES IN THIS FOOTNOTE: (a)
The
Associated Press, November 19, 1981, Thursday, PM cycle, Washington Dateline,
345 words, Reagan Seeks to Reassure Jewish Supporters, By DONALD M. ROTHBERG,
AP Political Writer, WASHINGTON (b)
The Camp David Accords; Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
and Museum. [37]
“The
‘First Intifada’ was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West
Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed ‘underdogs’ ”; from IS THE
US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A CHRONOLOGICAL LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE; Historical and
Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White [38] “Joint US-Soviet statement on the Middle East” (1 October 1977). [39]
“Press conference with President Jimmy Carter on the “Joint
US-Soviet statement on the Middle East” (1 October 1977) [40]
Madrid
Conference of 1991 | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [41]
“Bush
Sr.'s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which
brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza”; from IS THE US AN
ALLY OF ISRAEL?; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco
Gil-White [42]
Muravchik, J. 2014. Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned
Against Israel. New York: Encounter Books. (pp.85-89) [43]
Wikipedia (consulted 2016/06/12) writes: “Part of the reason for the [Waldheim] controversy was
Austria’s refusal to address its national role in the Holocaust. (Many
leading Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, were Austrians, and Austria became
part of the Third Reich.) Austria refused to pay compensation to Nazi
victims, and from 1970 onwards refused to investigate Austrian citizens who
were senior Nazis. Stolen Jewish art remained public property until after the
Waldheim affair.” This Austrian government, at President Waldheim’s request,
financed—though it did not directly impanel—an International Commission of
Historians to investigate. Before the verdict was in, Waldheim announced
“that the judgment of the Commission of Historians could not be binding for
him.” But in the end he celebrated, for on the most headline-grabbing
question—Was Waldheim guilty of war
crimes?—the Commission reported no evidence of his direct participation. What matters most, to an understanding of Waldheim’s
international role, and his activities on behalf of PLO/Fatah is not whether he committed war crimes, but this: Was Waldheim an antisemite? The Commission report did not consider this question directly.
They do mention, however, that “the Christian Social tradition of the
Waldheim family remains an undisputed fact.” Antisemitism was the very
platform of the Christian Social party led by Karl Lueger, who was mayor of
Vienna while Adolf Hitler lived there, and who was famously the source of
Hitler’s ideology. Waldheim’s father was active in the party. A question that the Commission historians did consider is
this: Was Waldheim an ideological Nazi?
This is useful because ideological Nazis hate Jews—it’s grammatical. Included in the Commission report is the statement of a Nazi
functionary who wrote that Waldheim was, “ ‘like his father, a supporter of
the Schuschnigg regime…’ ” Kurt Schushnigg, like Engelbert Dolfuss, the other
leader of Austrofaschismus (‘Austrian fascism’),
had been a politician in Lueger’s antisemitic Christian Social Party, later
integrated in the new movement. Proponents of Austrofaschismus did not wish to unite with Germany, but their
ideology was certainly closer to Nazism than it was to liberal democracy. True, the Nazi functionary quoted above also wrote that,
before the Anschluss, Waldheim had
rather publicly evidenced his “ ‘spitefulness toward our [Nazi] movement.’ ”
The Commission historians cite this as favorable to Waldheim. But it is
possible to have disliked the Nazi movement before the Anschluss without disliking its antisemitism. And, though the Commission historians do not
mention it, a New Yorker article on
this subject does: the same Nazi functionary stated “that after the Anschluss [Waldheim] was a diligent
soldier of the Reich and ‘served us well.’ ” This brings us to the question: Did Waldheim become a committed Nazi? In an interview with Commission historians, Waldheim asserted
that “I was never a member of any NS [National Socialist – Nazi]
organization.” The Commission
historians reached the opposite conclusion. With respect to the mounted SA (Sturmabteilung), they write: “His membership in this SA riding organization
is not open to dispute.” And they also write: “The documents also
substantiate that Kurt Waldheim was a member of the Nationalsozialistischer Studentenbund (NS Students’ Union)” or
the NSDStB, a Nazi Party organization. Given that Waldheim did join Nazi organizations, I must agree
with the Commission historians that “The pivotal question is: under what circumstances
did this membership come about?” The Commission historians point out that he was not coerced
into the NSDStB: “a personal initiative was required in order to become a
member.” Neither was he coerced to join the mounted SA; the Consular Academy
riding group, to which Waldheim belonged, was “integrated into an SA-Reiterstandarte because it itself
had made such a request.” How to evaluate this evidence? On the question of joining the NSDStB, the Commission
historians speculate that “this act could have been motivated in part by the
desire to overcome a certain number of obstacles… It is possible that in the
act of joining the NS-Studentenbund,
considerations of expediency may have outweighed those of political
commitment.” In other words, perhaps Waldheim was “in part” an opportunist
rather than a true Nazi. On the question of joining the mounted SA, the Commission
historians speculate that “among at least a few, a wish to accommodate to the
NS [National Socialist] regime may have been the decisive factor.” In other
words, perhaps Waldheim was among those (perhaps existing) SA members for
whom opportunist considerations were, perhaps, “the decisive factor.” On the strength of these evidence-free speculations,
Commission historians conclude that “there is no evidence to support any ideological commitment on
Waldheim’s part to National Socialism” (my emphasis). But if evidence-free speculations are allowed, one may well
ask: Why only in the direction that protects Waldheim’s prestige? This was
not a court of law—there was no presumption of innocence, no special burden
of proof either way. The Commission’s task was simply to weigh the evidence.
Thus, though one may of course speculate, it is always better to do so in the full historical context. “Chronology,” it is often said, “is the backbone of history.”
So consider a few important dates. Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. As the New Yorker points out, it was “two
weeks after the Anschluss [that] Waldheim joined the Nazi Student Union,” or
NSDStB. This context is missing from the Commission report. Given the
complexities of one country taking over another, Waldheim obviously joined as soon as bureaucratically possible.
Is that consistent with opportunism or with ideological fervor? Then there is Waldheim’s joining of the mounted SA. The
Commission report states: “The date of registration as a member is November
18, 1938.” But it does not mention the context that the New Yorker once again underlines: this was “one week after Kristallnacht,” when the SA ‘brown
shirts’ destroyed Jewish property, and ransacked, beat, and murdered Jews
throughout the Third Reich, which
already included Austria. In Vienna, most synagogues and prayer-houses
were partially or totally destroyed. To join the SA in this
context—especially when, apart from this, the SA had become relatively
unimportant (it had been superseded by the SS)—suggests enthusiasm for the
just concluded ‘action.’ We might well consider other elements of context. We know that peer pressure and direct instruction within Nazi
organizations turned many opportunistic joiners into committed ideologues. In
fact, we know that, once inside the totalitarian Nazi structure, resisting
Nazi ideology presented a serious challenge. Thus, Waldheim—even should we
accept the evidence-free speculation that he joined opportunistically—might
have been among the turned. After all, Waldheim’s pre-Anschluss political leanings were not too distant from Nazism,
and the whole point of the NSDStB was to infuse students with the Nazi
worldview. Moreover, anybody who did not quickly become an eager antisemite
would stick out like a sore thumb in the SA, a main function of which was
thuggery against Jews. The Nazi functionary who reported on him (see above)
certainly seemed to think that he had become a ‘proper’ Nazi. In full context, from Waldheim’s membership in Nazi
organizations, it seems less of a stretch to conclude that Waldheim was an
ideological Nazi than to state, categorically, that “there is no evidence to
support any ideological commitment
on Waldheim’s part to National Socialism.” But suppose we avoid the narrow question considered by
Commission historians—whether Waldheim was an ideological National Socialist—and ask whether he
was an antisemite. The pre-Anschluss
evidence speaks of a pre-existing antisemitism that his Nazi experiences
would only have reinforced. Finally, there is Waldheim’s service as a wartime Nazi officer
in the Balkans. Waldheim lied about that. The
New Yorker quotes from his book The Challenge of Peace: “ ‘The knowledge that I was serving in the German army was
hard to bear,’ ” he wrote, but “ ‘Deliverance from my bitter situation
finally came when our unit moved into active combat on the Eastern front in 1941.
I was wounded in the leg and medically discharged.’ ” The wound appears to have been real, but Waldheim served in
the Balkans until 1945. In fact, “he had spent the better part of the Second
World War working for a war criminal,” Alexander Löhr, remarks The New Yorker. And as a result of his
service there, “he ended up with a King Zvonimir medal from the Croatian
puppet state.” This was the same Croatian state whose literal bloodbaths in
Jasenovac, in fact the first death camp in Europe, were a bit too much even
for the Nazis. The New Yorker quotes Hubertus Czernin, the Austrian
reporter who first began tracking down Waldheim’s war record, saying that
Waldheim: This matters because it was in the Balkans that Hajj Amin al
Husseini, godfather to PLO/Fatah,
organized entire Muslim SS divisions that carried out massacres in the
region. Waldheim no doubt was well-informed of Husseini’s war crimes. Thus,
better than most others, he likely understood PLO/Fatah’s dark background. Were Waldheim’s postwar interventions on behalf of PLO/Fatah and against the Jewish State,
then, an expression of an enduring hatred for the Jews? “Austria has what could be called an anti-Semitic ‘vocabulary
of explanation,’ ” writes The New
Yorker, and Waldheim “did nothing really to discourage that vocabulary.”
On the contrary, “he used it himself. He let it be known that the World
Jewish Congress controlled the foreign press,” a canard drawn straight from
the Protocols of Zion, the Tsarist
forgery that became Hitler’s most important propaganda vehicle, and that, by
producing paranoia about supposed ‘Jewish power,’ was a main cause of the
Holocaust. SOURCES: Kurz, H. R., Collins, J. L., Fleishcher, H., Fleming, G.,
Messerschmidt, M., Vanwelkenhuyzen, J., & Wallach, J. L. 1993. The Waldheim Report: Submitted February 8,
1988 to Federal Chancellor Dr. Franz Vranitzky by the International
Commission of Historians. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press / University
of Copenhagen. [Waldheim’s preliminary refusal to consider any decision
“binding” appears in p.20; his denial of having joined Nazi organizations in
p.204; all other material appears in pp.33-35.] “Vienna, June 20”—Letter from Europe; The New Yorker; 30 June 1986. [44]
“How did
the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German
Nazis, and the US”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical and Investigative Research;
13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White [45]
“THE
NAZIS AND THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT: Documentary and discussion”; Historical and Investigative Research;
26 July 2013; by Francisco Gil-White “THE
NETANYAHU BOMBSHELL: Founder of Palestinian movement instigated the Holocaust”;
Historical and Investigative Research;
23 Oct 2015; by Francisco Gil-White [46]
“How did the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British
sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US”; from
UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical
and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White “THE
NAZIS AND THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT: Documentary and discussion”; Historical and Investigative Research;
26 July 2013; by Francisco Gil-White “THE
NETANYAHU BOMBSHELL: Founder of Palestinian movement instigated the Holocaust”;
Historical and Investigative Research;
23 Oct 2015; by Francisco Gil-White [47]
“THE
NAZIS AND THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT: Documentary and discussion”; Historical and Investigative Research;
26 July 2013; by Francisco Gil-White “THE
NETANYAHU BOMBSHELL: Founder of Palestinian movement instigated the Holocaust”;
Historical and Investigative Research;
23 Oct 2015; by Francisco Gil-White [48]
“PLO/Fatah's
Nazi training was CIA-sponsored”; Historical and Investigative
Research; 22 July 2007; by Francisco Gil-White “ACHILLE’S HEEL: The muftí, the
Nazis, and the ‘Palestinian Authority’”; Historical and Investigative Research; 16 Nov 2015, by Francisco
Gil-White |
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